BORNEAN ORANGUTAN

The Bornean Orangutan

They share 97% of our DNA. They use tools. They grieve their dead. They dream. And every day, another acre of their rainforest home is razed to make way for palm oil plantations — the ingredient hiding in half the products on supermarket shelves.

The Bornean orangutan — the name comes from the Malay 'orang hutan,' meaning 'person of the forest' — is our closest relative in Asia, a link to a common ancestor that lived 12-16 million years ago. These red-haired geniuses spend 90% of their time in trees, building elaborate sleeping nests each night, using sticks to fish insects from logs, and passing knowledge to their young through generations.

In 50 years, the Bornean orangutan population has halved. Their forest homes — some of the most biodiverse on Earth — are being bulldozed at a rate of one football field every 25 seconds. Those that survive the logging often end up in palm oil plantations, where they starve or are killed as pests.