ARE ORANGUTANS EMPATHETIC?
It was a usual day at the Nyaru Menteng forest school, where young orangutans were learning from one another while their human surrogate mothers looked on from below.
One sunny morning, our Post-Release Monitoring (PRM) team was greeted in the forest by a chorus of birds, welcoming the new day. Among the various different tweets, chirps, and whistles came a very different sound, shifting the focus of our PRM team members and prompting them to go in search of the source.
"Tuk-tuk-tuk, tuk-tuk-tuk, tuk-tuk-tuk", went the rhythmic tapping. The sound turned out to be from an olive-backed woodpecker (Chloropicoides rafflesii). Just as our PRM team was starting the day with a patrol, this olive-backed woodpecker was starting its day with some breakfast foraging. This bird’s diet consists of ants, termites, beetles, caterpillars, spiders, and small rodents, which it locates in wood.
When foraging for food, the olive-backed woodpecker will peck away at rotten or weathered wood, inadvertently producing a beautiful hole pattern. It's little wonder then, that this woodpecker is also referred to as ‘nature’s woodcarver’. The olive-backed woodpecker’s actions are quite interesting to observe, especially the way in which it carefully selects logs to forage within.
This bird is spread in a fairly limited area: In Indonesia, it is a resident of the forests of Kalimantan and Sumatra, including the Riau Islands and Bangka Belitung. It is usually found in mangroves, lowland areas, and hill forests up to altitudes of 1,200 meters. Our PRM team in the Kehje Sewen Forest often hears olive-backed woodpeckers tapping away in the forest, although it is sometimes hard to get a visual of them due to their small size!
It was a usual day at the Nyaru Menteng forest school, where young orangutans were learning from one another while their human surrogate mothers looked on from below.
Our Post-Release Monitoring (PRM) team at Camp Himba Pambelum in Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park (TNBBBR), Central Kalimantan, encountered Suci, a young female orangutan, three times back in 2023.
Kopral has been receiving treatment at the clinic since April 2023 due to wounds on the sole of his right foot and fungus between his toes.
