Young orangutans are like human toddlers. When their mothers say no, they don't argue or whine.
Orangutan mothers teach their children how to find food, but they change their tactics depending on the age of the child and the complexity of the food-gathering technique. They know when a child is old enough to know better.
A new study published in Scientific Reports describes orangutans living in a forest with their mothers on the west coast of Sumatra. The researchers recorded 1,390 incidents of juvenile girls asking for food from their mothers. The mothers are tolerant of this, but only up to a point.
David P. Watts, a professor of anthropology at Yale who has published widely on primate behavior but was not involved in this study, said that no one had done much work on this. People haven't studied the topic of how young primate learn to eat.
Orangutans stay with their mothers for an average of eight or nine years. They learn how to process more than 200 food items during this time.
It is easy to find and eat leaves and flowers. Orangutans must know when and how to harvest most fruits, which is a large portion of their diet. Getting honey out of a beehive requires the selection and design of a proper stick, as well as long practice in mastering the skill to use it.
An orangutan is 8 years old before it has learned how to feed itself and 12 years old before it has mastered the most complex food-finding and preparation techniques.
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A baby orangutan took food from her mother. The researchers found that the older the child, the easier it is to find and prepare food.
The researchers found that the older the child, the more likely the mothers are to share. Younger children are allowed to take food that is hard to find, and older children are allowed to take food that is harder to find. If an older child tries to grab flowers that are easy to find and eat, she will tell them that they are old enough to find their own.
Children of any age are willing to share the meat of small primate, squirrel and civets that orangutans sometimes hunt.
Orangutan mothers are patient and orangutan young are compliant. If a mother doesn't want to share, she gets into a position where the child can't reach the food The young one gets the message, no yelling, no drama.
The lead author of the study said that people and orangutans have role models who adjust their behavior according to their needs. In orangs, the initiative comes from the kid, while in humans, it comes from the adults.
Dr. Schuppli said that human children are surrounded by enthusiastic teachers, not only their parents, but also extended family and an entire educational system based mainly on active teaching.
She said that a kid needs to learn more than they could ask for. It is a bit simpler with orangutans.
Some orangutans are better teachers than others. No one knows.
Dr. Schuppli said that some orangutan mothers have children who learn faster. Do children learn faster if a mother shares more? We don't know. We don't have the right data to test it.
There is a danger of attaching human characteristics to animals without good evidence. Dr. Schuppli tried to resist the impulse.
She said that the data is descriptive first and the interpretation comes later. The data is analyzed based on hypotheses. Every great ape researcher has moments when he connects what he sees to the behavior of humans.
