Orang = Man

Utan = Jungle

Orangutan… Man of the Jungle

Baby rangas in Sepilok

One of the main reasons Kelsey and I wanted to go to Borneo was to see some rangas. Unfortunately, our home stay experience was a bit of a let down since we didn’t see any wild orangutans in the jungle along the river. But we had some time to kill before our flight back to Kuala Lumpur today, so we woke up early and headed to Sepilok outside of Sandakan, where there’s a famous orangutan rehabilitation center. We split a cab with some of our new German hostel friends, Vanessa and Winnie, and went to the center for the orangutan feeding.

Sepilok’s rehabilitation center was an amazing place. They take in baby orangutans who are orphaned, raise them, give them some human love, and teach them the skills they need to survive in the wild before releasing them. They have an adoption program, too – you can adopt a baby for 180 ringgit and basically be its foster parent from afar. One of the guides told us about and showed us photos of their babies that have been adopted already. The youngest is Peanut who’s only 2 years old, and one of the older babies has taken him under her wing, walks around with her long, gangly arm around him, shows him how to climb, sticks up for him when the others pick on him, and gives him all of her bananas as presents.

We went to the orangutan feeding in the morning, where they put out bananas and milk for the juvenile orangutans on a platform in the middle of the rainforest enclosure. All the babies came out, swinging along the ropes from the trees down to the platform. It was so cool seeing them play and eat and swing around the jungle. These babies are some of the most awesome animals I’ve ever seen. Little orange jungle men.