Not very long back, we brought to you a video of how Langurs responded to the death of a robotic langur, caught on spy camera under BBC’s ‘Spy in the Wild’ documentary project. This brand new concept which captures animals in action using robotic animals with in-built spy cameras, has now given us the video of a female orangutan trying her hands at sawing.
The voiceover tells us that over 20 years ago a rescue orangutan had learnt sawing simply by observing human beings around her build huts. This female orangutan however is a totally different case. Picking skills is understandable, but never could one imagine that an animal living in the wild could pull off a task this complex.
The animal finds the saw and a log and makes sense of what to do with the available objects in almost no time and keeps at it diligently till the time she is joined by BBC’s spy orangutan. It is at this point that she humours us with her competitive streak and looks at her competition for a while before she starts sawing with a lot more vigour.
Orangutans have opposable thumbs just like us humans and this makes it easy for them to hold objects with a firm grip. Soon after she gives up though, sawing is not that easy a job after all especially for a newbie. Initially she also clears the sawdust to make her work tidy. While the machine-run orangutan goes on with the sawing, real-life orangutan gets tired and loses motivation before yawning and dozing off.
Spy in the Wild is a first of its kind documentary and has been giving us brilliant insight into the animal world. Now let this orangutan make your day!
