Karta, a 27-year old orang-utan, escaped from her zoo enclosure by twisting the wires in the electric fence with a stick, making them short-circuit.

According to Sky News, clever Karta then “piled up debris to help her climb over a concrete and glass wall.”

Karta took herself back to the enclosure after an hour. The zoo curator says that Karta is ”ingenious”, and that she watches the day to day activities of zoo staff with interest – probably to see what she can learn!

Many animals, including great apes, pigs and elephants, have developed intelligence to obtain a living from their complex environments. Orang-utans in nature live in the Indonesian rainforest, one of the most biodiverse environments in the world.

Lives of Animals.org has some concerns with the comment in this clip that Karta’s enclosure will be “pruned.” While increased security may be wanted, restricting Karta’s environment is unlikely to be the best outcome for her. While the zoo has clearly attempted to provide an interesting enclosure for Karta, perhaps her escape attempt tells us that all is not well with her world. We have to ask to what extent is it possible to provide for the needs of complex, wide-ranging animals in captivity?

Never underestimate an orang-utan
There’s a anecdote often told about great apes and if you know its origins, please let us know.

Don't underestimate us

If you give a screwdriver to a gorilla, he will look at it briefly and then discard it.
If you give the screwdriver to a chimp, he’ll think of a hundred uses for it.
If you give the screwdriver to an orang-utan, he’ll pretend to ignore it until you’ve gone, when he will let himself of the cage with it…

More information
You can read more about amazing orang-utans here.

Tags: captive, freedom, Intelligence, sentience, tool use

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Intelligence, Orang-utans, Zoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.