In a steamy rainforest, an orangutan scales a tree, gripping and grabbing with fingers and toes. Palm fronds rustle. At the top, it uses its teeth and hairy hands to rip away the bark, revealing the ivory-colored center, the “heart of the palm.” High in the sky, the creature crunches on the tender stalk.
In a field nearby, Serge Wich, biologist, ecologist, and professor at Liverpool John Moores University in England, is studying orangutans. Wich and his colleague, Lian Pin Koh, are working in Sumatra, an Indonesian island in Asia. They’re running a series of tests with one of the first drones ever used to study wildlife. It’s 2011, and drones aren’t yet common. They cobbled this
