Page 111 - Culture Mag

School for Orphaned Baby Orangutans Helps the Young Primates Grow Up and Graduate to the Wild
Orphaned orangutans attend classes where they learn to crack open coconuts, avoid predators, climb trees and much more.
School is still in session for groups of orphaned orangutans across Indonesia.
The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation runs several orangutan rehabilitation centers throughout the country that operate like schools for young primates.
Orangutans who don’t have parents to teach them survival skills, can learn what they need to know to live on their own from human caretakers. These helpful babysitters move the orangutans through classes, like Coconut Cracking 101 and Snake Awareness, until there are prepared to take on the world.
Many of the orangutans are able to “graduate” and move on to living in the wild, helping conserve the endangered Bornean orangutan population.
All the orangutans attend the BOS Foundation’s unique school in a Borneo jungle in Central Kalimantan Indonesia. They are all orphans and are learning skills that one day will enable them to live once again in a true wilderness.
With their rain forest habitat being destroyed by deforestation at an alarming rate there are currently over 300 students going through the school system divided up to suit the age and skill range from babies just a few weeks old, to teenagers and young adults.
Through their lessons in baby nursery, forest school and the island “university” all these youngsters are adapting to the challenges of being taught survival skills by humans as they also deal with the ever-increasing social pressures of life in a tightly-knit community which could determine the future of their species.