ORANG UTAN EXPERIENCE 6th May 09 – 21st May 2009

The Volunteers
From left:
- Angeliki Repapis (37, England)
- Emily Baigent (22, England)
- Amie Hall (18, England)
- Laura Mallet (18, England)

This Month’s Activity

In May 2009, Zoo Taiping
received four very enthusiastic volunteers. Angeliki was an air hostess before she decided to migrate to Manila with her husband. Emily is a university student while Amie and Laura are friends traveling together after their A levels.

Throughout this month there are a few enrichments that we have done besides husbandry work cleaning exhibits and night dens at the Primate section.

The Orangutan’s night dens are filled with leaves and twigs that we collected around the zoo compound in hoping that the orangutans will show signs of nest making. The next morning we observe no signs of nest but surely the orangutans will prefer the leaves for the night for playing with!



With the Orangutans, Wasabi got an adventure with a strip of rattan with thorns still on it. We were there observing her for sometime, worried she might cut herself. But she proves herself intelligent! She manages to rip it by climbing to the platform with the rattan in one hand and push the rattan to the floor. By bending the rattan she manages to break it and strip it.

Next we gave her a big half rotten log and we put some nuts and raisins and we drizzle some honey into it. She played with it for almost three days. At first she went for the honey then the nuts and raisins. After eating all the treats, she began to roll the log and trying to push it around her cage. In the rotten log were natural insects like ants, moths, spider and etc. In the log was hollow and she tried to peek in and see what she can pull out.



We have made a few puzzle feeders as well for Amy the Ruffed Lemur, for the marmosets and tamarin and for Simon and Sally the White Handed Gibbon.

Simon and Sally reactions were terrific. We were a bit worried that they might fight for the coconut feeder because we made only one. We approach the gibbons the same way as with the lemur. Half of their food was presented normally on the platforms and the other half we put in the feeder. We hung it up in their cage from the cage roof. Simon was the first to check it out and Sally came later. They actually took turns to fish out the fruits in the feeder. They ignored the foods on the platform for the first 30 minutes. This feeder made them hung by one hand while the other hand is in the feeder.

The puzzle feeder for Amy the lemur and Simon and Sally the gibbons are similar made out of coconut. The top of the coconut were chopped off and the inside of the coconut were cleaned. Then we fill it with fruits and leaves (green leafy vegetables and browse) and hung it up. We started with Amy’s with half of her feed in her normal feeding plate and the other half in the coconut. She went to the coconut first and sniffed it before going to her plate. After a while she started to chew and put her long mouth inside the opening on top of the coconut. Only by the next day that she begun to pull out the browse and fruits with her hands. This month we also made two swings for Amy. One was made using a plastic basin and the other using a branch.



The marmosets and the tamarins got their apple feeder which is actually an apple with lots of small holes filled with sunflower seeds, peanuts, raisins and honey. The feeder have a through and through hole in the middle of the apple so we can put stings and hang it up. It is a very successful enrichment for them because after they ate all the treats they move on to the apple. The best part is this feeder made them hang upside down and other poses just to get to the tasty foods.

Project Progress
This month we manage to make a lot of enrichments not only for the Orangutans but also for the other Primates such as the marmosets and tamarins, gibbons and lemur. The materials we used in making these enrichments are more natural as well and most of them are not expensive.

Labels: great orangutan project, orangutan, orangutan volunteer