Childless couples eye orang utans

Childless couples eye orang utans

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Baby orang utans are being abducted and
reared by desperate childless couples in Malaysia, a newspaper
reported here yesterday.

The couples shave the body hair off the orang utans to make
them look more human, Edwin Bosi, an officer at the Sepilok Orang
Utan rehabilitation center in eastern Sabah state, told The Star
daily.

The wild animals were brought up thinking they were humans and
later abused when they began to wreak havoc in the homes, Bosi
said.

"The problem usually begins when an orang utan grows older. At
that time, it will bite and becomes too active for human care,"
he said.

"Sometimes out of irritation, these couples or their family
members abuse and hack them to death."

Bosie cited one case of a family that took an orang utan as
their "youngest child", named him Ramadhan, and kept him dressed
in a T-shirt and nappies. Ramadhan ate human food and slept in an
air-conditioned room.

"But when he turned three, it was too much to handle. So the
family returned it to our center for rehabilitation. Ramadhan
cried for many days, refusing to eat," Bosi said.

An average of three or four cases a month were reported of
people keeping the apes illegally and abusing them, and rangers
had to be sent to the plantations to bring them back to the
center, he said.

The Orang utan is a protected species under the Fauna
Conservation Ordinance 1963 and Bosi warned that those who hunt
them are liable to a five-year jail term upon conviction.

For other general offenses against the orang utan, those found
guilty face a maximum fine of 5,000 ringgit (2,000 dollars) and a
year's jail.

The project director for the World Wide Fund for Nature in
Sabah, Junaidi Payne, was reported by The Star saying such cases
were new to him.

"We will assist the state government to conserve sufficient
protected areas and ensure the animals are retained," Payne said.

"Orang utans are among the most intelligent of wild primates.
Keeping them in captivity is certainly not the proper thing to
do."

Officials said it was an irony that while lonely childless
couples turned to the apes out of desperation, there were still
people who dumped babies born out of wedlock.

A total of 276 abandoned babies have been reported in the past
five years.