Orangutans: Wizards of the Rain Forest - Hardcover

Russon, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1552094537 ISBN 13: 9781552094532

Publisher: Firefly Books, 2000

Synopsis

This extraordinary and definitive book about orangutans is based on the ten years of research that author and scientist Anne Russon has undertaken studying orangutan behavior.

The only great apes found in Asia, these arboreal wizards are by nature elusive and solitary, and inhabit nearly inaccessible tropical rain forests. The tragedy is that orangutans are now near extinction, surviving in the wild only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra where human influx is rapidly appropriating their habitat.

Orangutan populations have been further devastated by the human trade in captive primates. For those orangutans who do survive captivity, there are special sanctuaries in Indonesia and Malaysia which offer rehabilitation and a return to forest life.

Russon includes a scientific history of orangutans, a description of orangutans and their natural habitat, their astonishing behavior patterns, rehabilitation operations at Camp Leakey and Wanariset, the politics of orangutan rescue work, a look at orangutans released back into the forest, as well as what the future holds for these primates.

With more than 100 full color photographs taken by the author during her visits to the rain forests, this is an absorbing and instructive look at the complex and unusual world of orangutans.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Chosen by Booklist (American Library Association) as one of the top "Adult Science Books for Young Adults" in the year ending November 2000.

From the Author:

Almost thirteen years ago I set off for points east with the notion of studying orangutans in Borneo. That notion became a reality, one I found so fascinating that I have returned yearly ever since. As a psychologist I am concerned with how minds work, and my personal interest in orangutan minds was their intelligence. So I chose to study ex-captive orangutans under rehabilitation to forest life, in hopes that they would allow me the close-up look I needed to glimpse the workings of their intellect. I got that and more. The ex-captives allowed me an unusually intimate look at their species, one notorious for being elusive and keeping a distance. Primed to expect orangutans to be slow-moving dullards, at least compared to their quicksilver cousins the chimpanzees, I found instead that they are at least as sharp-witted as chimpanzees and they show it in many of the same ways -- imitating, using tools, planning, and deceiving, to name only a few. Spending time with them from day to day, from the sidelines, I also saw the richness of their lives -- work and play, squabbles and pleasures, plans, perplexities, mistakes, vexations, and successes. And eventually they showed me their original world, the rainforests of equatorial Borneo, and helped me learn something of that as well.

I wrote this book for anyone interested in other intelligences, in our living relatives on earth, or in orangutans themselves--especially people who don't have the privilege encountering them as free-living beings. My hope is to convey my sense of who orangutans are, how they see the world, and what it's like to meet them equals, on their own terms as much as on ours. It is also to bring home the threats we humans pose to orangutans -- threats so severe that we are on the verge of sending them to extinction. It is only through recognizing the damage we inflict that we stand a chance of protecting them, and it is only through caring enough that we will make the effort to try.

Anne E. Russon

About this edition

• Publisher: Firefly Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1552094537
• ISBN 13: 9781552094532
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224