Jarot

 He was sent to Medan in August 2012, after breaking his leg during forest school at BTP. Jarot made an excellent recovery and had a radio tracking transponder inserted between his shoulder blades in March 2013 in preparation for his release.

Jarot is an intelligent orangutan and participates well in all of the enrichment feeds and solves puzzles quickly. Some of Jarot’s favourite enrichment activities are fishing for food treats outside the cage with sticks, using tools to get food treats out of hanging puzzle feeders and carefully obtaining diced up fruit from leaf parcels. Jarot is also good at utilising and eating forest foods that the technicians source for the orangutans including forest fruits and leaves, bamboo and banana stem and termite nests. Jarot will bite the nests open and then suck the termites out. Termites are an excellent source of protein for wild orangutans.

Jarot is quite scared of humans but is friendly and interactive with the other orangutans. Jarot is great at teaching younger orangutans how to utilise various enrichment. Jarot was translocated to the Sumatran Orangutan Reintroduction Centre (SORC), known as Sungai Pengian, by road on 25 September 2013. In very exciting news, Jarot was released into the jungle the following day. Jarot has been going very well in the jungle since his release and is being checked on regularly. Stay tuned for his next update where will find out more about Jarot’s progress in the jungle!