1. Why should people care about obscure creatures like orangutans halfway around the world?
We should care about orangutans for three reasons. First, orangutans are being pushed to the brink of extinction because their habitat, rain forest, is being decimated by us, and the destruction of rain forest has wide-reaching implications for the health and survival of the human species everywhere. Second, orangutans are members of our family biologically. Along with other great apes, orangutans are our genetic and evolutionary kin, since human beings are primates too and we share most of our DNA with the great apes. We are descended from a common ancestor. The way our human culture has developed over thousands of years, we have disowned and denied and in a sense orphaned this branch of our family, much as we did earlier in western history with other human races. Caring about orangutans would help return us to our larger family on the planet. Third, coming to know orangutans would enrich our lives, in the way that any culture is enriched by contact with another culture and its ways of seeing and feeling and thinking about the world. For example, orangutans are more patient and forgiving as parents and teachers than human beings are.
2. What can people do to save orangutans from extinction?
As consumers we could use our economic power to swing away from purchasing the things that destroy orangutans by destroying their habitat. Those things are products made from timber illegally taken from rain forests and products made from vegetable oil that comes from palm oil plantations expanded to destroy the rain forest.
3. Why do you think that orangutans should be given the basic legal right to life?
I feel very strongly about this. The next stage of our moral evolution as human beings is to recognize that orangutans are thinking, sentient, feeling beings on a level with a human child or a dependent adult such as mentally impaired person and that they deserve basic legal rights, such as the right to life. It is a similar kind of moral evolution in the Western world to recognizing women and certain races as human beings. The recognition of orangutans has already begun with the decision in 2007 of the regional parliament of Spain’s Balearic Islands to grant rights to the great apes similar to the rights of a child or dependent adult. In 2002, Germany amended its constitution to guarantee rights to animals. Other countries have banned the use of great apes as captives in research.
4. Has writing the book changed you?
I think I feel a kind of happier cynicism after working on this book. I feel happier and a little less insular as a person to have had a glimpse into the world through the eyes of an orangutan and to know the people who care deeply about orangutans. But I feel sadder and more cynical to see the role that my own species plays in the relentless destruction of orangutans and the rain forest. We may be the last generation to know orangutans. That’s sad.
5. Was it frightening being in the jungle?
No, just the opposite. The jungles of Borneo and Sumatra are fairly peaceful places, although the heat and humidity on the equator are stifling and you have to be careful of insects and viruses. But the jungle itself is a lot more comfortable and safer than cities and the wildlife more civil.
Intimate Ape panel at the Fresno Zoo, March 13, 2010. Left to right: Shawn Thompson, Lyn Myers (assistant curator, orangutans), Bruce Campbell, Trish Campbell, Dr. Gary Shapiro (Orang Utan Republik), Michelle Desilets (Orangutan Land Trust) and Professor Richard Haas. Photo by Wendy Chang
