Berlin Zoo - Orangutan Exhibit

One of two outdoor exhibits for Orangutans. This one is the biggest one, in the second one the male orangutan live with two siamangs. Although, the indoor exhibits aren\'t this big, .

There are never enough climbing opportunities for orangs in zoos, and of course they are always sitting on the ground! However, I did like the Pongoland photos from the Leipzig Zoo.

It looks big, but they not have much climbing ability.

I always thought Orang-Utans were rather slow, but nevertheless good climbers...Maybe you wanted to refer to the already mentioned lack of climbing "possiblities" in this enclosure, @rillekolmard...

I've seen some orangs in Pongoland at the Leipzig Zoo sitting, eating,sleeping and playing on the ground also, altough they have so much trees.Maybe is has do to with because the Orangs WANT to sit , eat, sleep and play on the ground ? The only way to stop that is building Orang Exhibits without any ground.......

Good idea! To be serious, Apenhul have a fantastic exbith, but with almost no land surface of what I have seen, most climbing devices.

Singapore have an orang exhibit with no ground - the trees are hot-wired five metres up and the orangs are too clever to jump. It only works with the females and youngsters though as the males are too "slow".

Apenheul's orangseum and Singapore Zoo's red ape exhibit both utilize the brachiation of orangutans by forcing them to keep to the trees. Those are both excellent exhibits, as in the wild orangs spend at least 85% of their time off the ground. In hundreds of zoos worldwide the apes get fat and lazy and are constantly found sitting on the earth, and this is a far cry from their natural behaviour. Based on their natural inclination to remain in trees, I'd say that the Berlin Zoo's orangutan exhibit is extremely poor.

Cloudes leopards spend nearly 90 % of their lives in trees, but I see them in zoos also on teh ground.What can we do, this is not the natural behaviour of cloudes leopards ?

I've seen lions bathing in the water moats of their enclosures, this is not the natural behaviour of lions. So what can we do to stop this unnatural behaviour ?

I've seen elephants climbing across high fences, this is not their natural behaviour, If seen a red river hog,w hcih was hunting an adult male ancole cattle, this is not the naturla behaviour, so what can we do ?

Close all zoos !

So whats the problem, if an orang wants to sit on the floor, altough he could climbing in many, many trees in his exhibit ? Maybe a keeper is watching them all the day, and if an orang tries to get on the floor, he takes a fork and hunts the orang back up in the trees, where he belongs.

Back to the Berlin Orang Exhibit. First:This is only one of two orang exhibits.
Second, they have plans to build a new one in the next years.

@Zebraduiker: you ask what zoos can do and I think that the answer is obvious. Zoos can build brilliant exhibits that encourage the animals to engage in natural behaviours. Both Singapore and Apenheul (and even Melbourne Zoo in Australia) have orangutan habitats with lots of climbing opportunities that enable the apes to spend their lives much as they would in the wild. Berlin obviously have an orang exhibit that is primarily land space and nowhere near enough climbing opportunities...and so Berlin's apes will sit on the ground and get fat and lazy without showing their natural behaviour to the public.

The clouded leopard exhibit at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. has many branches for climbing, and when I was there in the summer I saw a leopard utilizing the height to prowl around in the trees. More zoos should copy such brilliant enclosures and then we'd all see much more natural behaviour in animals.