Fun with Orangutans

even got to help her sometimes. I’ll share lots of my experiences from that amazing day later, such as being able to hold a Cock of the Rock in my hands, or the time I got to experience what it really feels like to be low on the food chain, or almost getting to touch a tiger (oddly, these latter two are not the same incident). This time, though, I’ll talk about the magical time I spent in the orangutan nursery. At the moment, I sadly don’t have any pictures of orangutans of my own so I’ve had to illustrate this article with a stock photo. Forgive me. This one's about the right age, anyway!

     We were greeted at the entrance to the nursery by the trainer, to whom the youngsters were bonded. We would be meeting a troop of three: a very small male, a toddler-aged male, and a female whose age I don’t know but who, like that owl, was eye-to-eye with me when she was standing up and I was sitting down. Which I did immediately, as instructed, on the floor, letting them come to me.

     The first thing that became clear was that I wouldn’t be meeting the baby. He was immensely put out by my presence, and clung to the trainer, shrieking continually, until she moved far enough away from me to calm him somewhat. He just stared at me with big, worried eyes for the rest of the visit. The middle one, however, did find me interesting and came over after a while, sitting down opposite me and examining me solemnly from under his eyelids, tracing patterns in some dust on the floor with one forefinger.

     I honestly don’t remember which one of us started the game, but we did play one. I know that we stacked some objects between us – a piece of straw, a piece of fruit, a rock, some other things he found – and then we took turns. It was definitely a game, with rules I let him create and teach me. What we would do is, one of us would take an object, after on his part what appeared to be a great deal of thought and on mine was an imitation of that behavior, and then the other would too. This would go on until one or the other of us suddenly put an object back, which would necessitate the other doing so too. He really puzzled over which object to remove or place, sometimes changing his mind mid-action while reaching toward the “game board”, and I wonder what it all meant to him. Were we making art, maybe? Did he do this with other humans, with other orangutans? I’ll never know. We played this game for maybe half an hour. I have no idea who won, if it was even organized to have winners, but he was extremely serious and focused on it and it was absolutely fascinating.

     I didn’t try to touch any of them, waiting for them to make that first move if it were to happen. That part of our day at the zoo ended when one of them touched me.

     The third orangutan, the one whose age was probably equivalent to a human of maybe 11 or 12, had been watching all of this with a deeply suspicious frown, and now she walked over to stand just in front of the middle-sized guy, eye to eye with me, studying me carefully. I held still and let her decide what she wanted to do. After a few minutes, she reached across her body to scratch below her right shoulder blade with her left hand, then remained standing there with that arm draped completely across her own shoulder. She slowly turned her body as though to look behind her, on the right -- but she wasn’t looking behind her. She was winding up. When she brought her body back around it was in one swift whipping motion. Her arm extended away from that shoulder with incredible, increasing velocity, her hand connected solidly with the side of my head, and I went FLYING, sliding on my back and shoulder through the muck and straw and food particles native to a primate-habitat floor by afternoon. Luckily I had come fully prepared to get mucked up (although not battered), so this wasn’t a big deal.

     It was, excluding the table and acknowledging that I’m not a giant, exactly like this:

"When the giant growled, and turned around, an arm like
a couple of broom handles strung together with elastic
and covered in red fur unfolded itself in a complicated motion
and smacked him across the jaw so hard that he rose
several inches into the air and landed on a table."
-- Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

     It was decided that my visit had caused enough excitement for the day and we left for the next part of the vet’s rounds. I treasure this experience; it’s not many people who can say they’ve been backhanded across a room by a nonhuman Great Ape, and hey, it means I have, officially, touched an orangutan! Been touched by. Had physical contact with. Whatever. It’s neat.