Following Salvador

Hi everyone, I have just returned from three brilliant days following a large flanged-male orang-utan in the Sabangau forest, and wanted to share some of my experiences from the follow. This is my first orang-utan follow for over seven years, as my last work here was in 2004 as an assistant on Dr Helen Morrogh-Bernard PhD project.

We went out to search for orangutans early on Monday morning, and met him after ten minutes when I heard him breaking wood about 50m from the transect. I went to investigate, saw his eyes glaring at me through a gap in the undergrowth, and was greeted by a few angry ‘kiss-squeak’ vocalisations. I called in the other researcher to join me, and we followed the orang-utan at a distance as he moved away slowly. At first he was a little uncertain of us, climbing on to high logs, stopping, looking back, listening, and trying to work out if we were a threat or not. However after a while he relaxed, stopped looking at us, and went about his behaviour as normal, allowing us to get close enough to get really good views of him feeding and walking on the ground. As long as we stayed a respectful distance behind him, didn’t get too close and didn’t make too much noise, he seemed happy that we weren’t a threat and was content to ignore us.

We think that this individual is Salvador, a large male that turns up in our research area two or three times each year. He can be identified by a small scar on his upper lip, a white cataract in his right eye, a damaged middle finger on his left hand (the finger remains straight when he closes his hand around a branch), and two damaged toes on his right foot. He is huge and very impressive when he stretches out his body, but is very relaxed with researchers and treats us to good views and interesting behaviour.

Following large male orangutans is quite different to following females or smaller males. Whereas the smaller orangutans travel high in the trees, the large males are very heavy and often prefer to walk on the ground. They are massive animals, so when they are 10 metres away on the ground you can always feel your heart beating a bit faster!

Salvador travelled on the ground for about six hours that day breaking open rotten wood to search for termites, feeding on Pandan leaves, and picking jelly-coated fungi out of puddles At midday he met a female orang-utan (without baby), and stopped dead, went very quiet, and watched her pass by. He followed her from a distance and joined her to feed in a tree, but otherwise showed very little interest in her. They both ate in a Hangkang tree until about 3.30pm, when the wind picked up and we felt a few drops of rain. The female immediately moved away to a nearby tree and made her nest to sit tight for the night. However, Salvador was too preoccupied with food and kept eating in the tree until the heavens opened. He then moved away to a large-leaved tree nearby (Terontang), broke off two branches, held them over his head like an umbrella, and curled up in a ball to try and shelter. There was a massive storm, so heavy that we could hardly look up at his tree, but we couldn’t leave him until he had made his night nest as we wanted to follow him again the next day. After an hour and a half of torrential rain, he suddenly threw his umbrella down to the ground beside us, made a big long-call, and then turfed the female out of her nest! She had no way to resist this big orang-utan, so she had to slope off in the wet to make another nest nearby. They say that chivalry is dead…

The next day he spent about eight hours on the ground feeding on termites and pandan again. Both of these foods are high in protein, and it seems that most large male orangutans have to focus on these food sources in order to maintain their massive body size. In some places the forest understorey opened out, and we could get some excellent views of him eating termites from only about 10m distance. The forest is very wet at the moment, and several times we saw him washing logs in a puddle before feeding, and we think this behaviour has not been observed before. After cleaning the logs, he would bite off pieces of rotten wood with his teeth, and noisily suck out the termite grubs from inside.

On the third day he seemed to change his feeding strategy, and spent a lot more time up in the trees, eating fruit, leaves, bark and epiphytes. Again we had some wonderful views of him, once biting of chunks of Jelutong bark from trees, or delicately picking small epiphytes from horizontal branches. He met another female with a baby and older juvenile, but again he showed absolutely no interest in them. At about 10am he found a large fruiting liana in a high tree, and gorged himself on the fruit for about four hours. At about three o’clock, he slowly crept down out of the tree, looking a bit groggy with a belly full of fruit. He spotted an old orang-utan nest nearby, drew in a few fresh branches, and collapsed flat out on his back straight to sleep!

I’d have to say he’s one of the laziest orangutans I’ve ever followed, only making one new nest in three days, often travelling on the ground rather than in the trees, and not even bothered to investigate a couple of good-looking females. However, it is such a privilege to be able to see these animals behaving normally in their natural environment, and I found this a truly magical experience.