Guest post by Janie Dubman of OFI, special to mongabay.com
June 06, 2010

The lives of over 200 people have been linked to orangutans for 40 years. The people are biologists, firefighters, carpenters, veterinarians, drivers, artists and nurses. The orangutans are the only great apes in Asia, highly intelligent and highly endangered. The location is Borneo, Indonesia, and the mission is the save the orangutans from extinction. The leader is Dr. Birute Mary Galdikas.

Kanngiesser P & Call J (2010) Bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orang utans use feature and spatial cues in two spatial memory tasks, Animal Cognition, 13, 3, 419-430

Abstract:

Animals commonly use feature and spatial strategies when remembering places of interest such as food sources or hiding places. We conducted three experiments with great apes to investigate strategy preferences and factors that may shape them. In the first experiment, we trained 17 apes to remember 12 different food locations on the floor of their sleeping room. The 12 food locations were associated with one feature cue, so that feature and spatial cues were confounded. In a single test session, we brought the cues into conflict and found that apes, irrespective of species, showed a preference for a feature strategy. In the second experiment, we used a similar procedure and trained 25 apes to remember one food location on a platform in front of them. On average, apes preferred to use a feature strategy but some individuals relied on a spatial strategy. In the final experiment, we investigated whether training might influence strategy preferences. We tested 21 apes in the platform set-up and found that apes used both, feature and spatial strategies irrespective of training. We conclude that apes can use feature and spatial strategies to remember the location of hidden food items, but that task demands (e.g. different numbers of search locations) can influence strategy preferences. We found no evidence, however, for the role of training in shaping these preferences

Rhett Butler, mongabay.com
May 24, 2006

The air is warm and heavy with the morning humidity typical of the Borneo rain forest as our kelotok, a traditional boat, motors up a river so black in color it could be mistaken for ink. The raucous calls of a pair of hornbills can be heard over the rumble of the engine as they fly overhead with their gaudy and over-sized beak adornments.

I scan the surrounding primeval swamp forest for signs of life. Suddenly Thomas cries, "There, in the Nipa palm. An adult male orangutan!" I look up to see a giant red ape casually picking fresh leaves near the top of a riverside palm tree. He watches us before quietly moving back into the forest.

This is the first of many wild orangutans we will encounter over the next few days.

http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0524-orangutans.html

Geneva, 20 May 2010

The Secretariat has recently received a number of emails urging the
return to Indonesia of 11 orangutans confiscated by the CITES
Management Authority of Thailand in February 2009.

In keeping with its responsibilities to promote enforcement of the
Convention and to assess and communicate relevant information, the
Secretariat contacted the Thai Management Authority about these
messages.

http://www.cites.org/eng/news/press/2010/20100520_SG_statement_orangutan.shtml

Albiach-Serrano, A. et al. 2010. Great Apes Track Hidden Objects After Changes in the Objects' Position and in the Subject's Orientation. American Journal of Primatology. 72, 349-359.

Eight chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), five bonobos (Pan paniscus), five gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), and seven orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) were presented with two invisible object displacement tasks. In full view of the subject, a food item was hidden under one of three opaque cups resting on a platform and, after an experimental manipulation, the subject was allowed to select one of the cups. In the rotation task, the platform was rotated 1800 while the subject remained stationary. In the translocation task, the platform remained stationary while the subject walked to the opposite side from where she saw the reward being hidden. The final position of the food relative to the subject was equivalent in both tasks. Single displacement trials consisted of only one manipulation, either a rotation or a translocation, whereas double displacement trials consisted of both a rotation and a translocation. We also included no displacement trials in which no displacements took place. No displacement trials were easier than single displacements which, in turn, were easier than double displacements. Unlike earlier studies with children, there was no difference in performance between rotation and translocation displacements. Overall, apes performed above chance in all conditions, but chimpanzees outperformed the other species. This study reinforces the notion that the great apes use an allocentric spatial coding.

http://apps.isiknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=UA&search_mode=GeneralSearch&qid=1&SID=Z2hloD5hA4bEE8faKb8&page=1&doc=3&colname=WO

Researchers in the Malaysian state of Sabah in Borneo are joyful after receiving confirmation that a young male orangutan used a rope bridge to cross a river, which has separated one orangutan population from another. Due to logging and clearing forests for oil palm plantations, which cover 18 percent of land in Sabah, orangutans on the Kinabantangan River have been cut into fragmented populations.

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0411-hance_ropebridge.html