HOME |
RSS | 
Sally is a 44-year-old Sumatran orangutan at the Denver Zoo. She developed a benign fibroid tumor of the uterus that was interfering with her other organs. Veterinarian Diana Boon arranged to collect orangutan blood from around the country and enlisted volunteer surgeons to remove the growth. The doctors tried to prepare but found a dearth of information on orangutan anatomy.
But when Sally lost the ability to go to the bathroom, Boon understood she had only days to live if the obstruction wasn’t removed. So on a Friday afternoon she fired off e-mails to the team, telling them the surgery had to be done by Sunday. And they wouldn’t have blood.
“It had to be a bloodless surgery,” Boon said. “It was either this would work, or this wouldn’t work and it would be fatal for Sally.”
And then, the group got a break. Covidien, a Boulder company that makes a device called LigaSure that helps limit blood-loss during surgery, donated the use of a machine for Sally’s sake.
Another snag loomed. The procedure demanded quite a bit of rummaging around in Sally’s abdomen. If a wayward blade nicked her distended bowel, she would die; Sally would not understand how to use a colostomy bag.
There were other hairy moments during the six hours of surgery, but Sally came through it. Read the entire story (and see a video) at The Denver Post. Link -via Fark
An orangutan saves a tired baby chick with a leaf, then inspects it afterward to makes sure it’s all right. There’s not a ton of info available about this video (for instance, which zoo this is or when it was filmed), but the important takeaway here is that orangutans are both extraordinarily compassionate and also kind of gross, as evidenced by the first 40 seconds of the clip. How many times did you think the orangutan was going to eat the bird? I’m not gonna lie–I held my breath a few times.
via Pharyngula
You’d think that being in a cage would make it hard to feed a smoking habit, but that’s not the case in Malaysia. Here’s the shocking story of how visitors to the Johor Baru zoo fed Shirley, a 25-year-old orangutan cigarettes, just to watch her smoke:
The government-run zoo in in Johor Baru has erected a ‘no smoking’ sign but that will do precious little to stop the sad practice while attendants turn their backs on it.
Shirley spends much of her sad existence tearing apart drinks cans and chewing on food wrappers thrown at her by visitors.
She regularly reaches through the bars of her cage to beg for cigarettes.
The Daily Mail is there: Link
Baby Bob is an adorable orangutan at the Greenville Zoo in South Carolina. As part of his birthday celebration they thought it would be fun to have him predict the winner of the Super Bowl.
He was offered T-shirts for both teams, and chose the Packers’ shirt.
The executive director of the zoo is hoping he is wrong and is himself rooting for the Steelers.
We will find out Sunday if Baby Bob is as good an oracle as our dearly departed octopus friend. Rest in peace little Paul.
One day, Bhagavan "Doc" Antle of The Institute of the Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (yes, with the clever acronym T.I.G.E.R.S.) was taking Surya the orangutan on their daily elephant ride, when they happened upon a hound dog by the river.
And so began one of the unlikeliest friendships ever. Check out what happened next in this National Geographic Channel clip: hit play or go to Link – Thanks SparkS!
If you’ve ever sung a lullaby to your baby, you’ve just mimicked an orangutan: turns out orangutan moms sing to make their babies happy.
Eyes closed, hand on heart, this orang-utan mother appears to be belting out a ballad to her beautiful orange baby – perhaps I Will Always Love You-oo-oo?
Her offspring certainly seems impressed and screeches with delight while swinging among the trees in the wilds of Borneo.
Quick, someone call Simian Camel of Jungle Idols! The Daily Mail has the photo that will surely make you smile today: Link
33-year-old Nonja discovers her love of "photography", Facebook, and Internet fame rather late in life, but you’ll excuse the late bloomer: she’s an orangutan at the Schönbrunn zoo in Austria!
The Daily Mail reveals why she’s so interested in photography:
Using a specially-adapted Samsung ST 1000 digital camera, Nonja is rewarded with a raisin that drops out of the equipment each time she takes a snap.
The Vienna Tiergarten zoo set up the project to help keep Nonja and her three hairy ape friends entertained in their enclosure.
‘Of course the apes don’t care about the pictures, they are just an accidental side product,’ zoo spokesman Gerhard Kasbauer said.
‘They just know that when they press the button, a raisin pops out.’
Links: Facebook page (over 40,000 fans!) – via CNET
No one can deny that this Adelaide, South Australia, orangutan is smart. She managed to deliberately short circuit an electric fence with a stick, and was building a mound out of grass and sticks in the ditch in order to get to the second electric fence.
She has been previously known (I saw it) to get into electrified areas of her enclosure (they were being protected to let plants grow) by a complex plan of jumping from trees and down support wires.
This recent escape attempt resulted in the evacuation of the Zoo on Mother’s Day.
“This animal has a history of trying to outsmart and be a little bit smarter, and she’s an animal which has caused lots of keepers a lot of late hours,” he said.
Link – via stilllifewithcat
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Maeveone.
Bonnie, a 30-year-old female orangutan living at the Smithsonian National Zoological Part in Washington, D.C., started doing something strange one day: she started whistling!
Scientists have long known that orangutans copy physical movements of humans, but Bonnie’s whistling indicates that the learning capacities of orangutans and other great apes in the auditory domain might be more flexible than previously believed, Wich said. The behavior goes against the argument that orangutans have no control over their vocalizations and the sounds are purely emotional that is, an involuntary response to stimuli such as predators.
Bonnie appears to whistle for the sake of making a sound rather than to receive a food reward or some other incentive. If asked to whistle, she is likely to oblige, another indication to scientists that she makes the sound voluntarily.
Link | Video of the whistling orangutan – Thanks casey!
Sibu the orangutan has a fetish … He preferred his female zookeepers, especially blondes!
Apenheul Primate Park hoped Sibu would become its breeding male when he arrived two years ago, but orang-utans aren’t his type.
"He chases them, or ignores them, but he doesn’t do what he should do," said a spokeswoman for the park.
Instead, Sibu fancies his female keepers, especially blondes. That, the spokeswoman said, was common for orang-utans but Sibu has a fetish for tattoos, harking back to a heavily tattooed keeper who reared him.
"Orang-utans have special interests in special subjects. Sibu happens to like tattoos," she said.
Link | Image from Itshears [Flickr] – Thanks casey!
Previously on Neatorama: 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits
