What do orangutans eat in the wild

In the wild, orangutans play a significant role in dispersing the seeds of various plant species. A study carried out by the Borneo Nature Foundation discovered that orangutans played a vital role in dispersing ficus seeds.

The seeds spread by orangutans may grow into trees that may feed future generations of orangutans and other wild animals sharing its habitat.

Benjamin Elisha Sawe October 23 in Environment. Puma, Cougar, Or Mountain Lion? Bhopal Gas Tragedy. More Read about orangutan behaviour here. Tropical rain forests represent one of the richest and most complex eco-systems on the planet.

Fruiting and flowering are intermittent. Trees of the same species produce ripe fruit at different times in different years. Thus, it makes sense that young orangutans, who will eventually have to deal with such ecological complexity on their own as members of semi-solitary animal species, will remain with their mothers for 8 — 10 years as observed in Tanjung Puting, Central Indonesian Borneo, and in northern Sumatra.

Orangutans seem to like smaller fruits. Orangutans gather around in large number where strangled fig trees are abundant. However not all fig trees are consumed as some species are favored over the others and at Ketambe they feed on F.

Sumatran orangutans consume leaves more regularly than other members. They eat the leaves of stinging nettles such as Dendrocnide spp. Apart from fruits and leaves, orangutans also rely on aerial roots, leaf galls, epiphytic fungi, grass, orchids, stems of climbers, for their consumption. Orangutans remain active during the day—they spend most of the time in foraging and eating fruits. This explains that the limited amount of food also brings in a competition among apes and also restricts the number of orangutans that forages in any area.

Nonetheless, they do not always consume fruits. Orangutans supplement their diet with leaves, bark, insects, and seeds when the fruit is scarce. Orangutans typically prefer to consume fruits when they are readily available. Orangutans rarely feed on animal prey such as loris Loris spp. They are intelligent animals and when the food is scarce they use tools to extract otherwise unavailable foods.

Orangutans are very good at extracting food in that they insert probe tools into tree trunks and take out the larvae, insects, and honey. By doing so, they make up the deficiency of food.