“Most injuries are indirectly caused by humans, like starvation due to habitat loss.”
Dr Ketut, Veterinarian
My job is to care for the health of orangutans and rescue them when they wander into palm oil plantations or villages. Our priority is to treat them until they're healthy and then release them back into the jungle. Currently, we have about 260 orangutans in the care center, many of whom came in as babies and have now grown up. Some have been with us for over ten years and are ready to be released. The number of rescues varies: normally, we rescue about four to eight orangutans per year, but sometimes, we rescue multiple in one day from different locations. They wander close to villages and people, who then report them to us.
Most injuries are indirectly caused by humans, like starvation due to habitat loss. For females and their babies, the issue is often malnutrition. By the time we find them, they are already very weak, which complicates their care.
When people report finding a baby orangutan alone, it's usually because the mother was killed. Loggers and plantation workers clear the forest, causing the orangutans to flee, but they often return to their home range looking for food. They find newly planted palm oil trees and eat the young shoots. When plantation workers find their trees damaged and see the orangutan, they shoot it, take the baby, and give it to someone as a pet, usually claiming they found the baby alone in the plantation.
But a mother orangutan would never leave her baby.
We deal with a lot of trauma. Many baby orangutans come to us physically and emotionally messed up. They’ve been ripped away from their mothers and kept in awful conditions. They’re terrified, they might pee themselves, cry, hold themselves tightly, and won’t go near a male caregiver. Some don’t want to interact with anyone. They might be afraid of motorbikes or other specific things from past experiences. They often resist treatment, and won’t eat.
Breaking through to them can take years, and sometimes they never come around.
The orphaned baby orangutans need a lot of love and care. Some of the women here at the Care Centre become surrogate mothers, carrying them around like their actual mother would, strapping them with cloth and keeping them close all day and into the night, even while they clean the cages. Their dedication and compassion are incredible.
Photo by OFI
One time, we rescued a male orangutan with more than 50 air gun bullets in his body and head, but they weren’t deep, so he survived. Workers use long machetes to cut palm oil fruits high up in the trees, and sometimes they attack orangutans that come too close. In 2021, we found several orangutans with machete wounds: one had a huge wound on his head, and he survived. Another had a cut along his body and an almost severed arm, but he sadly succumbed to infection and septicemia. Thankfully direct injuries like these are rare. Our team tries to prevent these conflicts by moving orangutans when people report seeing them in their garden, ideally while they are still in relatively good health.
Some of the most common injuries in male orangutans, like open wounds and broken bones, come from fighting with other males to establish dominance.
Diagnostics & Treatment
Orangutans are physiologically similar to humans, so we often use human medical treatments and consult with human doctors. We had a case with an orangutan named Jade who was very weak, suffering from anemia and internal bleeding. Through a friend’s contact, I got in touch with a doctor who advised me on medication and helped perform a blood transfusion. We managed to save her, and now she's back in the wild.
Unfortunately, access to advanced diagnostic tools and treatments is limited here, especially in local hospitals. Finding someone with clinical pathology experience for diagnostic testing is a big challenge, especially when conditions are related to the liver, pancreas, or spleen, because we cannot always diagnose these from blood results. Additionally,
not all doctors are willing to help because they don’t believe treating orangutans is the same as humans.
Treating orangutans poses unique challenges. They can’t tell us what's wrong, and they don’t understand that we’re trying to help them, or worse, they think that we’re trying to kill them. This makes the work dangerous and complicates treatment decisions. Orangutans have incredible strength, especially wild and male ones. It can take four people to hold down a juvenile under 30 kilos, and he can pull his arm away even if a person is holding it. Any bigger and they are impossible to restrain.
We often have to use anesthesia, but it's risky. Decisions are tough. Do we use anesthesia to treat them, or try to hold them down? Even when weak, they fight for their lives. I once decided not to use anesthesia for a cutaneous infusion. The orangutan fought, used up all her energy, and died. It felt like any decision I made was wrong.
We always try to find the best way to save them, but sometimes it doesn’t work.
Photo by OFI
Every orangutan is different, and their responses to me vary, which affects how I care for them. Some, like Jade, allow me to get very close and because of that, I was able to provide more specific care and I saved her life when she was on the edge of death. Such close relationships are crucial when caring for wildlife.
Some orangutans are gentle and never have any issues. But generally, working with wild animals means dealing with unpredictability. In my first few months here, I was bitten by a wild orangutan during a release mission in Lamandau. I tried to keep my distance, but he jumped from behind and bit me. Another time I got bitten by an adult male with whom I had had a good relationship. He just decided one day that he didn’t want that kind of relationship anymore.
These experiences taught me that every individual is different. Even if we take care of them daily, they can suddenly turn on us, and sometimes there’s no obvious reason why. It might be your voice, maybe they don’t know how to relate to you anymore. For women it might even be sexual, where they stop seeing you as a mother figure and instead as a potential mate, which changes everything. We are forced to learn to sense if it’s safe to come close or better to stay away.
The most volatile are juvenile males going through puberty, changing from young males to adults. They’re not babies anymore and want to prove themselves, so they start testing everyone. Their hair stands up, and they get goosebumps, usually because of fear or anger, or because they’ve seen someone they don’t like, but sometimes you have no idea what triggers it.
What’s for sure is that once an orangutan decides they don’t like you, it’s forever.
When we’ve raised them from babies until they’re grown up, it’s bittersweet to release them into the wild. We worry about their fate in the jungle, but feel fulfilled knowing we gave them a chance. It’s why I continue to do what I do, despite the challenges and dangers. When one of the orangutans dies, it’s heartbreaking and makes me feel like I failed, but it also motivates me to improve my knowledge and skills, so I can save more in the future.
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