SLOW, solitary fruit chompers - that is how most people tended
to picture the orang-utan. Then in the early 1990s Carel van
Schaik, professor of anthropology at the University of Zurich in
Switzerland, discovered a bunch of very different orang-utangs
in northern Sumatra. These orang-utans use tools and are highly
social. Van Schaik ascribes the animals' traits and their dense
population to a greater abundance and lower diversity of foods
in the riverine backswamps they inhabit, now at risk after the
tsunami. Among Orangutans: Red apes and the rise of human
culture tells the story of van Schaik's discoveries, and their
challenge to theories of primatology and the insights they offer
into key moments in human evolution. Van Schaik covers the slog
of six years' fieldwork in mosquito-ridden swamps, punctuated by
the dizzy excitement of discovery - and followed by the grim
necessity of conserving the creatures and their environment. ...
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