Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We took a boat back to Semporna and from there a bus to Sandakan, taking 5h to reach the city.
Sandakan is well known by the apes that live in that region. We went there specificaly to see the orangutans.
We just arrived in the Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre in Sepilok, one of the only four in the world.
And it's the second most visited place in Sabah. Now we are going to check how they are treated here.
Nowadays, there are just ten orangutans in the rehab.
You can see the orangutans just in their meal time, which ones are at 10am and 3pm.
The orangutans come here to this rehab centre because they were doing drugs... I'm just joking...
They bring the orangutans here because they were found with some physical problem, illness or they were left in the jungle by their parents.
So they are brought here to have the rehabilitation.
The rehab process starts with their health examination and a quarantine period to eliminate any disease that can affect the other orangutans.
Their habits look like the human being habits. Because of this, Orangutan means "Man of the jungle". Orang = Man / Utan = Jungle
The young orangutan stays some day in the nursery to learn the main skills to be able to survive in the jungle, like to find food, build nests and climb trees, which ones they would learn with their parents.
Orangutans are the only primates that build nests.
The rehab treatment for one orangutan takes 6 to 10 years and it costs around 1.500 pounds per year.
So they have an adoption system where you pay 30 pounds per year and they send you two pictures and informations about your orangutan. Each 6 months they update you with new pictures and how it is behaving.
The park also has a visitor information centre where you can have more informations about the orangutans.
Everyday they also put a video about the work in the rehab centre.