Orangutan's diet Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Orangutan's diet - Essay Example Orangutans are known to be solitary but occasionally aggregation form particularly in enormous large fruiting fig trees. The individual Orangutans tend to compete as the scramble for food. Therefore, the paper will partly study the kind and strength of food competition in huge fig trees amongst the Orangutans and also probe the impacts of fruits seasonality on the changes in diets and energy balance amongst these wild Sumatran Orangutans to help understand the diet of Orangutans. Studies have shown that over 50 percent of Orangutans diet is composed of fruits hence earmarked as frugivorous. Also, their diet is composed of young leaves approximated to be about 25%, as well as barks and flowers rated at 10%. Moreover, Orangutans diets have also been uncovered to contain about 5% of insect primarily ants, pupae, crickets, and termites. The studies have also pointed out the wild Orangutans are selective and opportunistic. Therefore, during the emergence of tasty and nutritious insects, O rangutans feed all day on them (Nellemann, United Nations Environment Programme & GRID—Arendal, 2007, 34). In case of unavailability of fruits and insects, previous studies have observed that Orangutans feed on trees barks and leaves that are less in nutrition to avoid starvation. Moreover, wild Orangutans have been noted to learn to feed on hundreds of various food types as youngsters through observing their mothers while being permitted to take foods from the mouth and hands of their respective mothers. This study seeks to investigate  and understand the Orangutans’ diet. The study will help the researcher to understand precisely what constitutes these primates diet. Moreover, the study will add knowledge to the already knowledge about these primates. Further, the study will help the researcher develop insights into changes in Orangutan caloric intake, energy balance, and ketones in