As long as humans enter their lands, they get out to most private and inhospitable places, aiming to survive and not being hunted without any compassion. The few thousand of bonobos that survive in the south of Congo River, in a wetland region, know that this is their last frontier for survival. When humans get there, the future will be over for them and this will be quick. There are gold, ore and wood in the region, which stir up human greed.

A recent work of a group led by scientist Herman Pontzer, from Washington University, S. Louis, Missouri, published at PNAS Magazine, studied the urine of orangutans that survive in a destroyed forest in Indonesia. The conclusion was that they stay on tree tops, jump from one branch to another, waste few energy and eat less food.

The work recognizes that those orangutans, who are submitted to an aggression on their habitat, adapt to live with less food and movements, in order to save energy. They concluded that this is a source of comfort, no matter the tragedy it represents. However, Pontzer is critical and pessimist when he finishes his work with this commentary: “ If we cause the extinction of this species, we will have one more thing to be shamed of, because now we know that they are individuals that evolved to be a survival under hard natural conditions.”

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian
President, GAP Project International