Popi is flourishing at our BORA rescue centre in East Kalimantan.
Popi munching on wild fruit with her big new teeth
She is now eight years old and weighs 17kg. Since December, Popi has become far more independent at Jungle School. It has been a prolific fruiting season in the BORA forest, so Popi has been very keen to climb into the canopy immediately and feast on all the forest has to offer.
Little Jainul, a young male orangutan at BORA, has taken a shining to Popi and follows her at Jungle School. Popi slows down when he follows her, as if she is deliberately giving Jainul time to catch up with her. They have been foraging in the same trees and the keepers have even seen Popi give Jainul wild fruit to taste. This is so sweet of Popi and is great for Jainul as he is learning from a more experienced orangutan about what to eat in the forest.
Popi has lost some of her baby teeth and has recently grown one of her large front top teeth. She will often open her mouth and show the orangutan keepers the gaps in her mouth from her lost teeth.
Recently, Popi found bird’s eggs on the ground. Popi almost ate them, but the orangutan keepers stopped her. Our biologist then installed a camera trap near the eggs to discover which species of bird it was. Unfortunately, soon after, long tailed macaques were seen eating the eggs, so the keepers wished they’d let Popi eat them after all as it is good protein for wild orangutans. The biologist identified the bird species as the beautiful Bornean crested fireback.
When Popi isn’t at Jungle School she loves the enrichment given to her by the keepers, especially in the hanging feeder balls. Her favourite food is banana and least favourite food is cabbage.
Due to Popi’s great progress, she is moving up the list to move to a pre-release island, which is the final stage of rehabilitation before release.
Thank you so much to Popi’s adopters for helping her on her rehabilitation journey.
