#primate behaviour

The ones at my local zoo are fairly chill- my favorite is probably Belawan who sometimes hangs out in the hammocks near the glass and watches the visitors.

Orangutans are incredibly interesting because despite being naturally solitary, they can also be very social! They are like true introverts; orangutans need lots of alone time but still enjoy social opportunities. Here are my 3 favourite orangutan behaviours:

Tool use is not limited to hunting and foraging! Orangutans will use large leaves as hats or ponchos to provide shade and rain protection. They can also learn to use tools they have never encountered before by observing others, including humans!

While flanged male orangutans are the most solitary orangutans in the wild, in captivity this is not always true. Berani, a flanged male orangutan living in the Denver Zoo became his young daughter's primary caregiver after her mother died. While wild orangutan fathers never even meet their offspring, Berani does everything a mom would including sleeping with his daughter, carrying her, and even letting her mock-nurse on his skin bib.

While water is incredibly dangerous for orangutans who are much denser and not naturally bouyant like humans, a one-handed orangutan was observed swimming to access a termite nest during flood season in the jungle. This tremendous feat is an example of orangutans intelligence specifically for risk assessment, something that has been studied as part of what makes them such a successful species. Orangutan risk assessment is likely a major asset to surviving being the heaviest arboreal animal, as one would have to calculate which branches can support that weight and how to navigate safely.

It isn’t uncommon in the wild for chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas to capture small animals and carry them around, petting them. They frequently eat these animals too, but sometimes they just carry them around and let them go later. We have posted in the past about the silverback that found a tiny marmoset and cradled it for a while before putting it back in the tree he found it in. The bonobo that was photographed with a mongoose was a young male too, so it is not an instinct exclusive to one sex.

Awesome question, this is one I took straight to lemur keeper Liam of the Calgary Zoo, where they have a lemur enclosure guests can walk through, barrier-free.

Lemurs are not averse to eye contact, and in general respond a lot more to body language. This is why guests in the lemur enclosure are instructed to not bend down, as keepers assume the same position to feed the lemurs.

Eye contact is typically only a threat in species that have hierarchies where an outsider may threaten the group, and while lemurs can have hierarchies they are not as strict as macaques or chimpanzees. Lemurs threaten each other with stances and smells, in a technique known as 'stink fighting'

These ring tails are challenging each other by showing their scent glands off and preparing to pounce. Their threat language is totally different, and as humans don't have scent marking glands we don't run the risk of accidentally stink-threatening them.

Many species of monkeys are also not very reactive to eye contact, but lemurs are the least reactive of the primates. Besides their different social language, lemurs also don't see humans the same way monkeys and apes do. It is hard to quantify exactly, but apes and monkeys appear to understand humans as being similar to them in a way that lemurs do not.

Great question! This absolutely happens and it goes both ways. Some primates are particularly fond or wary of specific types of people.

A sanctuary I visited in Costa Rica had a capuchin that would freak out at curly haired men because he had been owned as a pet by one and was traumatized. Likewise, some primates are particularly attracted to people with features resembling caregivers they have had good experiences with.