Semenggoh Feeding

It was an orangutan feeding at the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre. I was lucky enough to see the staff feed five orangutans that live at the facility in the afternoon feeding session. They feed once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Semenggoh is a really neat place. It’s a center for rehabilitating orangutans that are having problems. There are no fences. The orangutans are loose. Notice the one on the picture had come down to take food out of the feeder’s hand. It was quite a show. It was one of the coolest, most interesting things that I saw when I was in Asia. I’ve heard that there can be as many as 20 of the orangutans present during one of the feeding sessions. I’d really like to see that. It’s one thing to see a docile animal, sitting in a cage in a zoo. It’s another to see them in roaming free in an area where they live. I was impressed. It wasn’t anything like I had imagined. Do you know that orangutans like to hang out at 30 to 60 feet up in the forest canopy? I thought I was cool driving up and down the strip in my hometown when I was a kid, but swinging around the canopy of a rain forest at 30-60 feet is so much cooler. They’re really great at swinging from tree to tree. I sat there amazed, watching them elegantly wandering around above me, effortlessly moving from tree to tree. This group was so much better than Tarzan ever thought about being. I could see where I might spend a few morning or afternoons a month at the center watching the orangutans if I lived in Kuching.