It is one of our closest cousins, yet we're hardly treating it like family.
Fully stretched, an orang-utan's arms can span more than two metres. Male orang-utans develop large cheek pads that female orang-utans apparently find irresistible, as do hunters. The shaggy, orange orang-utans, the only great apes to live outside of Africa, are agile but slow, and easy prey for poachers, who kill them for their body parts - the skulls are particularly valuable - or sell them as trophy pets to rich Asians for tens of thousands of dollars.
As a result, the population of orang-utans per square kilometre in Taipei is now greater than it is in their natural habitat, the forests of Sumatra and Borneo. The orang-utan population of the nondescript Bangkok suburb of Minburi is similarly dense. It's home to Safari World, a 80-hectare zoo at the centre of the world's biggest scandal involving the endangered apes.
A raid on the zoo by Thai authorities last November found 115 orang-utans, most of which police suspect were snatched from the wild and smuggled into the country. In theory, the apes should have been immediately removed to a safe place pending an investigation into their origins. But not only have they stayed put, the Thai authorities have so far proved peculiarly reluctant even to investigate the Safari World case, let alone press charges.
Last Monday, 10 months after the initial raid, a police-supervised veterinarian began taking blood and hair samples from the orang-utans, which will then be DNA-tested to prove the apes' origins. The results will take three to four weeks.
For conservationists and animal-rights activists, the Safari World scandal is further evidence of Thailand's pivotal role in the trafficking of our planet's rarest animals - a global trade worth US$6 billion a year. 'After drugs and arms, the illegal wildlife trade is the next most profitable form of black market business in the world,' said Steve Galster of the US-based group WildAid. 'But most governments still treat it as low-priority crime.'
