On Day 3 of #orangutancaringweek I’m talking food! Orangutans spend up to six hours a day eating or foraging for food. In the wild, they are known to eat 400+ different foods and during times of poor fruiting they will eat less nutritious food such as bark and leaves. One of their favourite foods is the durian fruit, covered in sharp spines and pungently smelling. Orangutans use a variety of tools and their powerful jaws to break into such fruits.
Whilst fruit is their food of choice, making up 90% of their diet, they also eat other foods such as honey, nuts and insects. Orangutans also occasionally eat soil, ingesting minerals that perhaps neutralize the high quantities of toxic tannins and acids in their primarily vegetarian diet.
Mothers teach their babies what food to eat, in which trees to find it and in what season. Orangutans have a habit of eating fruit while cruising from one tree to another, snacking on the way during their explorations. In this way, orangutans play an important role in seed dispersal. The seeds from the ripe fruit are adapted to withstand passage through the orangutans' gut. The seeds are excreted in their own small pile of faecal matter that helps them to germinate and grow, away from the parent tree. Orangutans play a vital role in the workings of the rainforest ecosystem. It’s thought that orangutans must have a very complex mind-map of the forest and detailed knowledge of the fruiting cycles of many species of trees. This prevents wasting valuable energy randomly searching for fruit trees and travelling to a certain fruiting tree whose fruits will not ripen for some time. Babies must also be taught how to identify the many different species of plants and trees, which ones are edible, and how to process them, as some are very difficult to eat because of their sharp spines and shells.
Orangutans are solitary animals and it is rare to see them in groups in the wild. However, the Tanjung Puting reserve is now home to thousands of rescued orangutans – it is running at carrying capacity and does not have sufficient space and resources to sustain any more. 
Supplementary food is now given at various feeding stations around the reserve, ensuring that the orangutans have access to food even if it is scarce in the forest. Of course, this also provides a good experience for tourists - regular feeding leads to predictable congregations of orangutans at a given place and time. These (almost) guaranteed sightings make life somewhat easier for eco-tourists and budding wildlife photographers, albeit in a somewhat artificial setting. There is no shortage of people willing to pay to get such a close view of orangutans, providing an important revenue to the area that allows the reserve and its many creatures to continue to be protected. 
At the feeding stations, orangutans are fed a variety of foods including mango, banana, corn and yam. Milk is occasionally given as a supplement. Orangutans get most of their water from the succulent fruits they eat, but will also drink from rivers and streams. Mother orangutans sometimes let their young drink from their mouths, and will soften fruit before passing it on to weaning youngsters. The feeding stations are a great place to observe orangutan behaviour and interactions. It was fun to see youngsters testing their independence, though nervousness and tension was also visible particularly when several males were present at the same time. Young, submissive orangutans would often ‘grab and run’, retreating to the trees with as much as they could carry.
The feeding stations also attract other animals. Wild boar were seen foraging under the feeding platform at Camp Leakey, and a cheeky squirrel stole fruit from another. Colourful, exotic butterflies can often be seen feeding on the remains of the fruit. To learn more about orangutans, visit
https://www.orangutan.org.uk/orangutans
#orangutans #orangutancaringweek #redape
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