Gallery: Orang-utans can swim – we’ve got pictures to prove it
ORANG-UTANS normally steer clear of water. In the wild they rarely go near rivers and lakes, where crocodiles and snakes lurk. So it came as a surprise when a group of orphaned orang-utans that had been relocated to Kaja Island in Borneo started to get wet for all sorts of reasons.
“Orang-utans are famous for their fear of water,” says Anne Russon of York University in Toronto, Canada, who studies the orphan apes. Their dense bodies sink rather than float, prompting some zoos to stop putting moats around enclosures – too many have drowned. But “one…
