Orangutan Island

  March 5, 2025

"The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin." ~ Balzac

Fortunately, that has not been my experience with mine! Any man who'll carry a hot oxygen concentrator on his back in this heat and humidity is definitely a keeper! As you can see from the photo, this animal sanctuary is a bit different. We are the ones in a caged walkway, while the great apes who live here have free roam of the entire 5 acre island.

There he is, sporting his best "Top Gun" look, complete with shades & ball cap. In fact our guide in Singapore, Teng, christened the DH "Tom Cruise." Guess he didn't know Tom is just my height.

Orangutans and humans share about 95.5 to 97% the same DNA, depending on which study you cite. There are some similarities. We observed one of the males using a long stick to reach a slice of fruit that had landed on our side of the fence. Definitely tool users. Unlike the barbary apes we saw on Gibraltar, which creeped me out with both their similarities and their other-ness to us, I felt comfortable with these ruddy giants. (Maybe the double fencing between us had something to do with that...)

The orangutans in this sanctuary were brought over from the Borneo provinces of Malaysia. Some came needing medical care and rehabilitation. Some have been born here and will later be resettled in the jungles across the South China Sea

This fellow put on quite a show, waving his hands to us, encouraging visitors to toss him one of the apples we were given to snack on. If it landed too far for him to reach, he'd wait until the current brought it to him. Orangutans don't swim too well, which makes the island an ideal place for them to enjoy without bars or wires except those between us and them. Once he'd eaten his fill, he climbed up and swung hand over hand on a rope strung from the platform back to dry land, carrying a spare apple in one foot. Must be handy to have four hands sometimes.

After our excursion to see the apes, #1 Daughter texted to ask if I'd made friends with an orangutan, I had to admit that yes, I did. 

The rest of the group was down at one end of our enclosure and the DH & I started to walk back along the way by ourselves. There was a rustling in the forest to my right and I stopped to see one of the females, the oldest one on the island at 38 and mother of many of the youngsters, coming directly toward me. I think she was drawn to the color of my yellow umbrella because she sat down right across from me and we simply looked at each other for a long moment. 

I was careful not to smile because our guide had told us that smiling was "the baring of teeth" to an orangutan. But we continued to hold each other's gaze--the DH says it was about a minute. I'm not sure what we said to each other in that continued eye contact, but it felt...like one mother to another, if that makes any sense. I could see there was a soul behind those dark eyes.

Hugh Ross, my favorite Christian cosmologist and astrophysicist, says mammals are "soulish" creatures--intelligent, emotional, able to connect with others in relationships. After my experience on Orangutan Island, I have to say, "Amen."