Only about 100,000 Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) remain, less than half of their original numbers. People are killing the iconic orange apes at rates that could lead to their extinction…
It started with monkey poop. A few years ago we analyzed the feces of wild baboons, chimpanzees, red-tailed monkeys, and red colobus in Uganda and found unexpectedly high levels of…
JAKARTA — A palm oil company in Indonesia has finally started paying off a $23 million fine for burning an important Sumatran orangutan habitat more than a decade ago, highlighting…
Tourists from around the world pay top dollar for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hobnob with gorilla families in Uganda’s montane forests. Part of the rationale for the steep prices is…
BALIKPAPAN, Indonesia — The deforestation rate has surged in a key habitat for critically endangered orangutans in Indonesian Borneo, with an area of forest 40 times the size of New…
JAKARTA — Despite various commitments from global brands and the government to protect Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, home to some of the rarest species on Earth, development of new palm oil…
JAKARTA — Major investors continue to sour on a hydropower project being built in an orangutan habitat in Indonesia, with the powerful Norwegian state pension fund the latest to call…
JAKARTA — Male orangutans that resettle to a new area appear to be imitating the behavior of local individuals in an effort to survive and find a future home range,…
Beatboxing became popular in the 1980s, when Doug E. Fresh performed the style around the New York City hip-hop scene. However, the seeds of this vocal technique, which involves making…
On this episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast, Terese Hart, a researcher with the ICCN (the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature); Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, a wildlife veterinarian and founder…
JAKARTA — There’s been renewed scrutiny of the infrastructure being built for Indonesia’s new capital city on the island of Borneo following the sighting of a critically endangered orangutan crossing…
Chimpanzees tend to sleep more on the ground than previously thought, a behavior that has implications for their conservation and could help explain how and when early humans abandoned trees…
Newly captured images from camera traps in the Tayna Nature Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have recorded two mother-infant pairs of critically endangered eastern lowland gorillas. These…
JAKARTA — When scientists made the bombshell announcement in 2017 that the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) was a new species, the apes were immediately put under the global spotlight. With…
In 2017, the Tapanuli orangutan was identified as a new species of great ape — and immediately became the most endangered great ape on the planet, with a total population…
A team of international scientists has used a new genetic tool to measure the size of a population of crab-fishing chimpanzees living in a pristine mountain range in Guinea where…
JAKARTA — Deforestation associated with oil palm cultivation has declined in recent years in Indonesia, but in a biodiversity haven at the northern tip of Sumatra, the forest is being…
Gorillas and chimpanzees, like humans, have long been known to get infected with malaria. But evidence of the parasite's effects on bonobos, one of humankind's closest genetic relatives, has been…
MEDAN, Indonesia — An investigation into the violent death of an orangutan in northern Sumatra in January has shone a light on the persistent problem of human-wildlife conflict and illegal…
BATANG TORU, Indonesia — With fewer than 800 individuals remaining in the wild today, the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan isn’t just the most threatened great ape species in the world…
The dents and dings on the surfaces of rocks used by chimpanzees to crack open nuts preserve a history of how the animals used the tools and how those patterns…
JAKARTA — Indonesian academics have called out the government for banning five foreign scientists after they questioned official claims of an increase in the country’s orangutan population, warning that the…
Orangutans, like most of the world’s great apes, are struggling. Their numbers continue to drop as their habitat disappears, or they’re killed by humans for food, out of fear or…
JAKARTA — “Remarkably lax” and “laissez-faire” law enforcement efforts by conservation authorities in Indonesia have allowed the killing, capture and trade of scores of orangutans to persist, according to a…
Mountain gorillas are currently the only nonhuman great ape whose population is not declining. Thanks to successful conservation interventions, the species' population has increased from 620 in 1989 to more…
JAKARTA — A second tunnel collapse this year at a controversial dam construction site in Indonesia has killed another Chinese worker, bringing the toll from the project to 17 in…
Rahayu, a juvenile female orangutan, arrived at a rehabilitation center on the Indonesian part of Borneo island feverish, unresponsive and almost comatose, recounts Karmele Llano Sanchez, program director at International…
Bonobos, sometimes referred to as the "hippies" of the ape kingdom, have long been known for their relatively peaceful relations within core family groups. But there’s been less consensus about…
LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Three chimpanzees have been kidnapped and are being held for ransom after intruders broke into a primate sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo.…
JAKARTA — Indonesian police are investigating possible negligence in the death of a Chinese construction worker at the site of a controversial hydroelectric dam in the only known habitat of…
