ORANGUTAN CONSERVATION AND REHABILITATION

REHABILITATED ORANGUTANS

orangutan at Semenggok

Rehabilitation centers have been set up to reintroduce young orangutans to a life in the wild have scored many successes. The animals, which are brought in from zoos, lumber camps and villages where people who kept them as pets, are often able to adapt to the forest after a year or two. More than 250 orangutan have been returned to the jungles of Kalimantan. Most are orphans.

Orphans and confiscated animals are brought in every month to theses facilities. Mishaps are common. One newcomer to Galdikas’s facility, who had only been out of her cage for a day, climbed to the top of a tree, grabbed a rotten vine and fell 60 feet, breaking her arm. Brindamour took care of the animal by making her a cast.

Orangutans being trained to return to the rain forest are referred to as "students" or as "bicultural" depending on their ability. In the first year of training orphans are taught things they would have learned from their mothers such as climbing trees and swinging from branches, sometimes with ropes wrapped around them as if they were rock climbers. They learn how ro make nests from observing other orangutans do it. The youngest ones sometimes wear disposable diapers so they don’t dirty themselves and youngsters wear clothes to keep them warm and are fed milk from bottles.

The heart of the rehabilitation program is a set of platforms set up in the forest for orangutans. Bananas, papayas, white bread, pineapples and other food on the. The orangutans are allowed to feed on the food but are also encouraged to go into the forest and seek food and an independent life. After they leave the orangutan often return and beg for food, especially when food supplies in wild are dwindling. Some rehabilitation centers take a tough love approach and stop offering food to get the orangutans to return to the forest. Some orangutans have been able to prosper in the forest and give birth and raises a new generation of orangutans.

At Semengok Orangutan sanctuary in Semengok (20 miles from Kuchin) in Sarawak is a 1,600 reserve with a halfway house that provides a home and wilderness training for orphans and formerly captive orangutans. According to AP, "new arrivals are quarantined for month and any ailments are treated. Then it's “outbound school” for as many a s four years of training in climbing, building nests, foraging for food and relating to others of their kind. Those who have lived with humans less than five years usually face few problems. After the semi-wold stage, the final step is their release into large sanctuaries or remote tracts of forest, their contact with humans, severed." At Semongok the orangutans are kept in cages between training session. After two years they animals are expected to have risen to a semi-wild status in which they close whether to live in the world or drop by the camp for the twice-a-day feedings.

In 2006, a subadult female that was captive-born was released into the wild from Perth Zoo in Jambi, Sumatra. This was the first attempt to release a captive-born orangutan into the wild.

Websites and Resources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; BBC Earth bbcearth.com; A-Z-Animals.com a-z-animals.com; Live Science Animals livescience.com; Animal Info animalinfo.org ; World Wildlife Fund (WWF) worldwildlife.org the world’s largest independent conservation body; National Geographic National Geographic ; Endangered Animals (IUCN Red List of Threatened Species) iucnredlist.org

Bohorok Orangutan Viewing Center

Bohorok Orangutan Viewing Center (south of Gunung Leuser National Park, 100 kilometers west of Medan, Sumatra) is where orangutans that have been raised in zoos and found by timber companies in Kalimantan and Sumatra are taught how to fend for themselves in the forest. The orangutan's live in the forest and come to the center during feeding time in the morning which is the best time to visit.

Bohorok was set up in 1973 as a rehabilitation center and has been officially operating viewing center since 2002, when a quarantine center was set outside Medan. The Medan facility is where rehabilitation and training is done. Bohorok has been closed to new orangutans since 1996 but those that were already there had no place to got and were allowed to stay on.

Bohorok used to be very difficult to get to. Steep hills, rivers and wilderness had to be traversed to get there. It is still somewhat isolated but that has not stopped tourists from going there. Now it is one of Sumatra’s largest tourist attraction and has became a victim of its own success. There are problems with guides feedings orangutans in the forest for the benefit of tourist (a clear no no that defies the rehabilitation concept), tourists touching the orangutans and possibly spreading disease to the animals and orangutans stealing tourist packs. The Medan facility is closed to tourists.

Bohorok is currently in the process of converting itself to an eco-tourism destination. An education center is being set up. The prime attraction are the feeding times, two times daily, on a platform in the jungle on the west bank of the Sunghai Bohorok, where orangutans come out of the forest for bananas and milk. To reach the site tourist cross the river in a dugout canoe. The feeding times are between 8:00am and 9:00am and between 3:00pm and 4:00pm. River crossings are available between 7:30am and 8:00am and between 2:30pm and 3:00pm.

On most days about a half dozen orangutans show at the platform, less if there are abundant food supplies in the forest. Visitors need to be accompanied by a guide to enter the park and have to buy a permit at the park entrance. It takes 30 minutes to walk from the park entrance to the boat crossing and another ten minutes to get to the viewing platform. Longer walks can be done in the forest.

Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program

Reporting from Bukit Tigapuluh National Park, Indonesia, Richard C. Paddock wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Peter Pratje, a German wildlife biologist and project leader of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program, plans to free as many as 50 rehabilitated orangutans in Bukit Tigapuluh National Park in central Sumatra, where the species has not lived for 150 years. The orangutans — orphans illegally captured in the wild, sold as pets and later seized by authorities — are learning to live in an environment they haven't known since they were small. [Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2005]

“Unlike some orangutan rehabilitation centers, this one is not run as a tourist attraction. The 24-mile dirt road into the park keeps visitors and illegal loggers at bay by turning to mud in the rainy season, stranding travelers for days at a time. The younger orangutans at the center are released from their cages during the day to explore the nearby forest and learn how to find some of the 200 foods a wild orangutan eats.

“It's up to the younger orangutans to decide when they are ready to stay overnight in the jungle. Older orangutans, when they are deemed ready, are taken a short distance into the jungle and released. The staff monitors them and feeds them if necessary. Some disappear quickly and stay away for long periods. Others come back to the center and hang around for months. Some never adjust, like Sari, a 12-year-old who lives in the camp, sleeps in a metal barrel instead of a tree and steals vegetables from the garden rather than forage in the woods.

"It's clear that not all orangutans can be rehabilitated or reintroduced," said Pratje, who estimates that 20 percent are too accustomed to human ways to adapt to the jungle. "If they are kept very well, like part of the family, the chances of turning them back into orangutans is smaller," he said. "Those who were treated badly hate humans. If they hate humans, they don't expect us to feed them." Of the 35 orangutans released between January 2003 and May 2005, four are confirmed dead and eight are unaccounted for, Pratje said. Over the long term, he expects that about half the orangutans he releases will survive.

“Two four-man enforcement teams hired by the center patrol the national park, watch over the orangutans and occasionally destroy illegal logging camps. It is the first time since the fall of the Suharto military regime seven years ago that wildlife regulations have been enforced in the park.

Story of a Rescued Orangutan at Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program

feeding station

Richard C. Paddock wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Mustafa, the largest of the 35 freed so far, stands a good chance of becoming the group's alpha male. He is believed to already have fathered two babies through the bars of his cage while awaiting release at the Orangutan Reintroduction Center on the edge of the park. Estimated to be 15 years old, he seems good-natured but is potentially the most dangerous because of his size. [Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2005]

“Pratje believes Mustafa was captured when he was about 3 and still with his mother. At some point, Mustafa was taken to the Hotel Niagara near Sumatra's scenic Lake Toba, where he was called Boy and kept in a garden mini-zoo with snakes, monkeys, monitor lizards and a younger orangutan, also called Boy.

“His home was a cage 6 feet wide, 10 feet long and 10 feet high. "It was like a jail," acknowledged Agun Pakpahan, Mustafa's keeper during his last two years of captivity. Mustafa was kept there for a decade, Pratje believes. "His crime," he said, "was being cute when he was a baby." Hotel guests were allowed to feed the orangutan bananas and other fruit. Sometimes he would get upset and grab a visitor's hand, Pakpahan said, but he never hurt anyone. He liked to climb around in the cage and be sprayed with water. It appears Mustafa was well cared for; he does not display the animosity toward humans that is common among mistreated orangutans. Pakpahan said he wept the day he came to work in 2002 and found that police had confiscated both of his beloved Boys.

“Mustafa spent 15 months at the reintroduction center at Bukit Tigapuluh, a camp of scattered wooden houses and orangutan cages about 200 miles south of the equator, and was released into the wild. The arrival of Mustafa presented special problems. For one thing, he was much too big to be let out for his lessons. Keepers brought about 50 kinds of food to his cage. They demonstrated how to eat termites and break open a rattan vine with their teeth. But Pratje was uncertain how much Mustafa learned. "There's a lot we can't teach," he said. "We can show him the fruit but not the tree."

Release of Rescued Orangutan at Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program

Richard C. Paddock wrote in the Los Angeles Times: Pratje decided to release Mustafa during the rainy season, when food was most abundant. The keepers lured him into a metal box measuring about 4 feet long, 3 feet wide and 3 feet high. It had a small mesh screen at one end that allowed him to peer out. Eight men carried his cage on poles for a day through the leech-infested jungle, then ferried him by bamboo raft upriver to a remote part of the park. [Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2005]

“On the first day, the eight bearers carried Mustafa into the forest along an old logging road, then up and down steep trails through the jungle. The temperature was above 90 degrees and the air was heavy with humidity. "This is the most difficult one because he is the biggest and the site is also the farthest," said Suparman, 26, an enforcement unit leader who has been involved in many of the releases. Like many Indonesians, he uses one name. "It's also more difficult because it's the rainy season and the trail is more slippery."

“The group stopped frequently to rest and occasionally pull off leeches. When the bearers came to a stream or river, they jumped in fully clothed to cool down. Mustafa sometimes pounded on the box when the team stopped, but most of the time he was calm. That afternoon, the team set up camp by the Manggatal River and made a bamboo raft for Mustafa. Hornbills flew over the towering trees. Gibbons howled continually from the nearby treetops. A rare Malayan tapir came out of the forest 50 feet from camp and crossed the river to a deep swimming hole.

“The next day, the group headed up the Manggatal, wading in the shallow river alongside the raft, which was an unstable 3 feet wide and 40 feet long. Sometimes the men were up to their necks in water and struggled to keep the raft and Mustafa from tipping over. Orangutans generally dislike water, and the plan was to release Mustafa on the far bank so he would not return to the orangutan center. The bearers carried the metal box up a small stream, set it under the trees, opened the door and retreated to the safety of the stream.

“Mustafa crawled slowly out of the metal cage and found himself in the middle of the Sumatran jungle. He had been behind bars for a dozen years. Now he was home. He hesitated for a moment, then scampered up the nearest tree. In quick order, he swung on a vine, fed on termites from a rotting tree and built a sleeping nest 60 feet above ground. Pratje and the team, watching nervously from the water, marveled as Mustafa, who had been in the cage for more than 48 hours, climbed from tree to tree, swung on a vine and broke branches for the nest.

“After 90 minutes, Mustafa climbed a small tree by the bank of the stream. The tree bent, allowing him to climb into a tree growing from the opposite bank -- and suddenly the water wasn't such a barrier. Most of the team withdrew and hiked back to camp half a mile downstream. Mustafa followed on the far bank, swinging through the trees. Within an hour, he had reached the trees across the river from the camp.”

“Pratje was concerned that Mustafa would trail the crew all the way back to the center. He decided that all but a small observation team would break camp and leave at 4 a.m. before Mustafa awoke. That night, a torrential storm lashed the jungle. Mustafa spent his first night of freedom in a tree with lightning crashing all around and water pouring down in buckets. By 4 a.m., the river had become so swollen that the current would have swept away anyone who tried to wade. The group clung to the side of the raft in the pitch dark, half wading, half floating down the swollen river. The trick worked, and Mustafa didn't follow. The ape was sighted a month later near the spot where he was released. Since then, no one has seen him in the dense jungle, but Pratje believes he is still nearby.

Nyaru Menteng Rescue and Rehabilitation Center

At Forest School 103 at Nyaru Menteng Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, led and founded by Lone Droscher-Nielsen, rescued orangutans are taught to form their own society and then set free in the forest. With helicopters, mapping and other logistical support from the world's largest mining company BHP Billiton that operates a coal mining concession in Central Kalimantan, Nyaru Menteng released 36 adult orangutans in 2007, and 25 in 2008, filmed for Orangutan Diary. A planned airlift of 48 orangutans scheduled to take place in July 2009 was cancelled as BHP Billiton intended to withdraw from the area for strategic reasons. Orangutans that have been released have tiny radio transmitters placed under their skin to monitor their movements.

Reporting from Palangka Raya, Indonesia , where the center is located, Andrew Higgins wrote in the Washington Post: Over the past decade, Droescher-Nielsen, a former Scandinavian Airlines Systems flight attendant, has saved nearly 600 orphaned orangutans in Borneo from almost certain death. Funded by donations from abroad, she has given the apes food, shelter and better health care than many humans in these parts ever get. Now, the 46-year-old Dane is preparing for a more difficult — and controversial — task: returning tame orangutans to the wild. "They were born wild, and they deserve to go back in the wild again," said Droescher-Nielsen. "That is our ultimate objective." [Source: Andrew Higgins, Washington Post , November 14, 2009]

“Some experts wonder whether orangutans raised by humans will be able to hack life in the forest and whether diseases they might have caught in captivity will harm kin that never left the jungle. Droescher-Nielsen, whose project has grown into the world's largest primate rescue effort, expects most to make it. "The ones we set free are not going to be wild, but they can manage," she said. It will take a couple of generations for bad habits picked up in captivity to be completely purged. Disease, she added, shouldn't be a problem because the area selected for the trial release doesn't have a viable orangutan community of its own. Droescher-Nielsen initially hoped to start returning orangutans to the wild years ago, but, as forests kept retreating, it became increasingly difficult to find a safe place to put them. The task was further complicated by the fact that rehabilitated apes don't fear humans -- a big problem when many humans see them as a menace and want them dead.

“Keeping orangutans fed and sheltered is expensive. The Nyaru Menteng project has a staff of about 200 people. Salaries, food, medicines and other expenses mean that it costs about $2,000 a year for each of the nearly 600 apes in residence. That is more than twice the average annual income in the area. An additional 400 or so of the primates are being cared for in other rehabilitation centers in Borneo. "I'd like to be an orangutan," joked Nordin, a local environmental activist, who like many Indonesians uses one name. "They get given meals, and when they get sick they get sent to hospital."

“Droescher-Nielsen's center has a well-equipped clinic. Adult orangutans spend much of the day in a nearby peat-land forest that is off-limits to loggers and oil palm growers. Each afternoon, dozens come out of the trees for a "social hour" in the main compound. They munch fruit, climb on a jungle gym and play on swings. At night, they are escorted to a cluster of cages; the younger primates are piled into wheelbarrows and taken to a separate sleeping area.

“To survive in the wild, the orangutans will have to forget their pampered past lifestyle. Droescher-Nielsen's staff members have devised a number of techniques to try to help prepare the animals for life on their own in the forest. About 125 apes, for example, have been moved onto islands in a nearby river, where they have little contact with humans. Most of their food is still provided, but they have to work much harder to get it: It has been placed in trees, not simply left on the ground. Some of her center's orangutans, Droescher-Nielsen said, have scant chance of surviving in the wild, so they will have to stay put until they die. This could mean decades, as the animal's average life expectancy is 40 to 45 years. Those likely to stay include the blind, the maimed and apes "just too plain stupid to make it."

“Some question whether protecting apes in captivity will contribute to the long-term survival of the species. Rescuing baby orangutans is a "welfare issue, but it is not good for conservation," said John Burton, head of World Land Trust, a British conservation group. He's against returning orangutans that might be carrying human diseases to the forest and thinks that keeping them in expensive rehabilitation centers is "not cost-effective" as it only adds to a "world surfeit of captive orangutans." The main focus, he said, should be on protecting forests and the wild apes that live in them.Droescher-Nielsen agrees that the fundamental problem is the destruction of trees. But she also says humans must take responsibility for the havoc they've already caused. "I don't look at this with my brain. I look at it with my heart. I cannot leave these victims," she said. "We're the cause of their becoming orphans. What should we do, just euthanize them? Should we just kill them and say, 'I don't really care?' "

Orangutan Rehabilitation Has Created Genetically-Mixed Hybrids

The forests of Tanjung Puting National Park in southern Borneo contains several orangutans that are hybrids of different orangutan species and subspecies. Scientists said, in research published in February 2016 in the journal Scientific Reports, that decades-old attempts to rescue, rehabilitate, and release orangutans unintentionally created an unnatural mix of genetics among the park’s orangutans that could pose future health problems for these endangered apes. [Source: TakePart.com, April 3, 2016]

TakePart.com reported: “The situation dates back to the pioneering work begun in the 1970s by orangutan researchers and rescuers Biruté Galdikas and her husband, Rod Brindamour. At that time, scientists still debated whether the orangutans living on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra were different species, something that wasn’t fully accepted until 1996. Beyond that, what no one back then yet realized was that the orangutans living on Borneo actually represented three different subspecies, each from a different part of the island and each with widely divergent genetics. “Bornean orangutans last shared a common ancestor around 176,000 years ago and have markedly differentiated over the last 80,000 years,” said Graham Banes, the lead author of the new paper and a scientist with Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “That’s an incredible amount of independent evolution.”

“Galdikas and Brindamour rehabilitated more than 90 orangutans at their famous Camp Leakey research site and released many of them back into the national park. The animals, most of which were rescued from the pet trade, came from all over Borneo and, we know now, were not all from the same subspecies. At least two females released into the park came from the western portion of the island, home to a subspecies different from the orangutans that already lived in the park.

“When Banes and his colleagues, including Galdikas, tracked the genetic lines of these two orangutans, they revealed two vastly different stories. One female, known as Rani, had at least 14 descendants, all but two of which are believed to still be alive.The other, Siswoyo, only had eight descendants, most of which did not survive. The researchers concluded that these vastly different levels of reproductive success could be the result of what geneticists call “hybrid vigor” or “outbreeding depression,” scenarios where the combination of genetics from two different subspecies can cause either benefits or consequences.

“These hybrids may be the tip of the iceberg for Tanjung Puting’s orangutans, as Banes said other people might have illegally released hundreds of additional animals of unknown subspecies into the national park over the years. If enough of their offspring have thrived, the resulting “cocktail” of unusual genetics “could have serious implications for their health and reproductive success, not only for individuals, but for their offspring and descendants as well,” Banes said.

Breeding and Studying Orangutans

Scientist collect urine from wild orangutans by placing a sheet under their nests to determine what they have eaten and check for signs of menstruation, infections, weight loss and hormone levels. Cheryl Knott, an anthropologist at Borneo’s Gunung Paiung National Park, Indonesia, wrote in National Geographic: Marissa and her baby are among the 50 orangutans I've studied in the wild since 1994. I and my team of field assistants, managers, and students have spent more than 50,000 hours over the past decade observing orangutan behavior and documenting the apes' physiology. Our work investigates how the boom-and-bust cycle of rain forest fruits affects birth intervals and the length of juvenile dependency. [Source: Cheryl Knott, National Geographic, October 2003]

“Recently we participated in a joint effort with other scientists to look at orangutan "culture" — customs passed from one generation to the next and often unique to particular populations. For example, Martina will grow up threatening strangers by making kiss-squeaking sounds into a handful of leaves — a behavior seen regularly only at our site. Some 500 miles west of Borneo in Sumatra, orangutans use sticks to pry calorie-rich seeds from prickly, hard-to-eat Neesla fruits, a clever trick that youngsters pick up from the adults — and one that Borneo's apes have not devised.

“Populated with about 2,500 orangutans, Gunung Palung is one of their last strongholds. Describing a new addition Knott wrote: Marissa had a baby!" The good news arrived with my field assistant Rhanda as he dashed into our research camp. For three days we hadn't seen Marissa, one of about 50 orangutans I've studied in the wild since 1994. Rhanda found Marissa eating fruit from a Gnetum vine with the newborn female clinging to her mother's side. Orangutans bear young only about once every eight years (thought to be the longest span of any mammal), so there was much to celebrate. That was in 1998, shortly after I first reported on my research for National Geographic In several successive trips to Borneo, I've been relieved to find that Martina and the other orangutans at our site are doing well, despite the ever expanding reach of illegal logging.

Zoo-bred hybrid offspring of parents from Sumatra and Borneo are called "cocktail orangutans" or "mutts." Scientist are now trying to halt intermixing of the two subspecies, arguing they are genetically polluted and disrupted the biological integrity of the species. Some have argued that two groups are species, more genetically different than tigers and lion, or chimpanzees and bonobos. The hybrids can live out their lives at zoo, but no longer can produce offspring. Critics of the policy as an ape version of racism, and that the hybrid are treated like second class primates.

Orangutan Conservation

Birute Galdikas wrote in the New York Times: “The international community must recognize that it has some responsibility for what happens to the great rain forests of Indonesian Borneo. Foreign investment in local development programs needs to be expanded. Village level projects, like the one financed by the United States Agency for International Development and run by Boston-based World Education near where I work, have empowered farmers, strengthened village economies and employed local people, giving them a stake in preserving the forest. [Source: Birute Galdikas, New York Times, January 6, 2007]

“We need more of these programs. Indonesia could also impose a special tax on companies that profit from rain forest destruction, with the revenues dedicated to forest and orangutan conservation. Proper labeling of palm oil content could allow a consumer boycott of soap, crackers, cookies and other products that contain it. Finally, Indonesia needs to be more vigorous in enforcing the excellent laws it already has to protect its forests.

At a meeting in Pontianak, Indonesia in October 2005, leading environmental and wildlife agencies called for a united effort to protect the habitats of Borneo's orangutans. We would like to develop an action plan putting together all stakeholders," said Jito Sugardjito, representing Fauna and Flora International (FFI). Representatives from FFI, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the UN's Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP) and UNESCO gathered to try and pool their expertise to save the orangutan. "Large-scale and coordinated actions are needed so that the limited resources available for securing the Bornean orangutan can be used efficiently and effectively," Indonesian government conservation official Adi Susmianto said.

“FFI are very good on law enforcement. WWF is very weak on that. Both are very good on rehabilitation, said WWF Indonesian director Nazir Foead. “Our strength is in habitat management and corporate engagement...We need to work a lot with corruption watch NGOs’ to keep tab on the palm oil industry.

World Land Trust and Buying Land in Borneo for Orangutans

Bill Brubaker wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “A hopeful sign came in 2007 when Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono partnered with nongovernmental organizations to launch a ten-year plan to protect the remaining orangutans. Without such protections against deforestation and illegal mining and logging, he predicted, "these majestic creatures will likely face extinction by 2050." [Source: Bill Brubaker, Smithsonian magazine, December 2010]

"Some of the palm oil plantations seem to be realizing that there is concern in the world about what they are doing," Galdikas says. "This to me is the best development." But, Galdikas says, provincial officials in Central Kalimantan have done little to stop palm oil plantations from encroaching on Tanjung Puting. "That's why we're trying to buy as much forest land as we can, so we can actually make sure the palm oil companies can't buy it," she says. "It's absolutely a race against time."

World Land Trust (WLT) is a non-profit organization intent on helping orangutan by buying land in the ape’s natural habitat in Borneo to keep it out the hands of loggers and palm oil plantation owners at a a cost of $1,107 an orangutan. According to the group’s website: “Whilst over 20,000 hectares of forest are under protection in the Lower Kinabatangan floodplain, the forest reserves are fragmented. The aim of WLT and its partners is to purchase strategic areas of forest to create wildlife corridors that will link these fragmented patches and ensure a continuous habitat exists for wildlife. [Sources: Times of London, World Land Trust website]

David Attenborough is a major supporter of the WLT. According to WLT website: The WLT is working hard to raise funds for strategic land purchases in Borneo and has already secured two important corridors. Our project partners are currently looking at other critical Orang-utan corridors for WLT support and funds will be directed towards future land purchases. In addition to securing corridors, WLT has helped fund land protection and the development of management plans for the land saved, with project partner HUTAN. Funds have been used for HUTAN’s Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Project (KOCP), particularly the Honorary Wildlife Warden Scheme, jointly set up by HUTAN and the Sabah Wildlife Department. WLT is funding one of HUTAN's Honorary Wildlife Wardens as part of our Keepers of the Wild Appeal.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated December 2024