Scientists Identify a Third Orangutan Species

By the time they got to the orangutan, it was already dying.

In the Batang Toru forest, on the western flank of Sumatra, orangutans will often venture from the jungle to pick fruit from nearby gardens—a habit that puts them in conflict with villagers. In November 2013, the conservationist Matthew Nowak got word of one such conflict, and his veterinary colleagues went to investigate. They arrived to find a male orangutan, badly beaten, his face and hands riddled with cuts. Despite the team’s efforts, he died from his injuries eight days later.

With just 120,000 orangutans left in the wild, the loss of any one is a tragedy. But this particular ape has a significance that will transcend his death. Based on, and a study of several orangutan genomes, Nowak and his colleagues think that the dead individual belongs to a different species of orangutan than those that we’re familiar with. If they’re right, there are actually species of these orange-haired apes. And the newly described one would be the most endangered great ape alive.