A male orangutan on the Indonesian portion of Borneo died after being shot at least 130 times with an air gun and apparently being stabbed and clubbed, in the second known killing of a critically endangered orangutan this year.
Villagers spotted the wounded orangutan in a lake in the Kutai Timur district of East Kalimantan province on Sunday.
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In this Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018 photo released by Center for Orangutan Protection (COP), Principal of COP Hardi Baktiantoro holds an x-ray showing air rifle pellets lodged in the head and body of an orangutan during its surgery in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. (Center for Orangutan Protection via AP)
In this Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018 photo released by Center for Orangutan Protection (COP), Principal of COP Hardi Baktiantoro holds an x-ray showing air rifle pellets lodged in the head and body of an orangutan during its surgery in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. (Center for Orangutan Protection via AP)
Local police chief Teddy Ristiawan said Wednesday that the great ape was still alive when he was taken Monday to a hospital in the town of Bontang.
A statement from the Center for Orangutan Protection said the orangutan died early Tuesday.
An X-ray showed at least 130 air gun pellets in its body, including more than 70 in its head, the center said.
It said an autopsy found the animal had been blinded as a result of the shooting and also had 17 open wounds believed to be caused by sharp objects. Its left thigh, right chest and left hand were bruised from blunt object trauma.
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Ramadhani, a manager of habitat protection at the center who goes by one name, said the death was a terrible event in the history of conflict between orangutans and humans in Indonesia.
"The 130 pellets within the body of a primate is a new record, the most ever," he said.
In mid-January, an orangutan was found decapitated and shot more than a dozen times with an air gun in Central Kalimantan, environmental news website Mongabay reported. Police arrested two rubber farmers suspected in the killing, it said.
The number of orangutans in Borneo and on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, recognized as separate species and both classified as critically endangered, has fallen precipitously since the 1970s.
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Orangutans are a protected species in Indonesia and Malaysia, but deforestation has dramatically reduced their habitat and brought them into contact with farmers and plantation workers who kill them to protect crops and for meat.
About 40 percent of Borneo's forests have been lost since the early 1970s and another huge swath of forest is expected to be converted to plantation agriculture in the next decade.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An orangutan appeared to treat a wound with medicine from a tropical plant— the latest example of how some animals attempt to soothe their own ills with remedies found in the wild, scientists reported Thursday.
Scientists observed Rakus pluck and chew up leaves of a medicinal plant used by people throughout Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation. The adult male orangutan then used his fingers to apply the plant juices to an injury on the right cheek. Afterward, he pressed the chewed plant to cover the open wound like a makeshift bandage, according to a new study in Scientific Reports.
Previous research has documented several species of great apes foraging for medicines in forests to heal themselves, but scientists hadn't yet seen an animal treat itself in this way.
“This is the first time that we have observed a wild animal applying a quite potent medicinal plant directly to a wound,” said co-author Isabelle Laumer, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany.
The orangutan's intriguing behavior was recorded in 2022 by Ulil Azhari, a co-author and field researcher at the Suaq Project in Medan, Indonesia. Photographs show the animal’s wound closed within a month without any problems.
Scientists have been observing orangutans in Indonesia’s Gunung Leuser National Park since 1994, but they hadn’t previously seen this behavior.
“It’s a single observation," said Emory University biologist Jacobus de Roode, who was not involved in the study. “But often we learn about new behaviors by starting with a single observation.”
"Very likely it’s self-medication,” said de Roode, adding that the orangutan applied the plant only to the wound and no other body part.
It’s possible Rakus learned the technique from other orangutans living outside the park and away from scientists' daily scrutiny, said co-author Caroline Schuppli at Max Planck.
Rakus was born and lived as a juvenile outside the study area. Researchers believe the orangutan got hurt in a fight with another animal. It's not known whether Rakus earlier treated other injuries.
Scientists have previously recorded other primates using plants to treat themselves.
Bornean orangutans rubbed themselves with juices from a medicinal plant, possibly to reduce body pains or chase away parasites.
Chimpanzees in multiple locations have been observed chewing on the shoots of bitter-tasting plants to soothe their stomachs. Gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos swallow certain rough leaves whole to get rid of stomach parasites.
“If this behavior exists in some of our closest living relatives, what could that tell us about how medicine first evolved?” said Tara Stoinski, president and chief scientific officer of the nonprofit Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, who had no role in the study.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
This combination of photos provided by the Suaq foundation shows a facial wound on Rakus, a wild male Sumatran orangutan in Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia, on June 23, 2022, two days before he applied chewed leaves from a medicinal plant, left, and on Aug. 25, 2022, after his facial wound was barely visible. (Armas, Safruddin/Suaq foundation via AP)
This photo provided by the Suaq foundation shows a facial wound on Rakus, a wild male Sumatran orangutan in Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia, on June 23, 2022, two days before he applied chewed leaves from a plant, used throughout Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation and to kill bacteria, to the wound. (Armas/Suaq foundation via AP)
This photo provided by the Suaq foundation shows Rakus, a wild male Sumatran orangutan in Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia, on Aug. 25, 2022, after his facial wound was barely visible. Two months earlier, researchers observed him apply chewed leaves from a plant, used throughout Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation and to kill bacteria, to the wound. (Safruddin/Suaq foundation via AP)
