Article

Orangutan

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Orangutan

The orangutan, historically recorded in the scientific literature under the genus name Mias, is a great ape native to the forests of Borneo and the Malay Peninsula. In the archival record of the Society’s journals, the animal appears primarily through the lens of natural history observation—specimen measurement, behavioural notes on captive individuals, and, in more recent decades, critical ethnography of rehabilitation programmes in Sarawak. The literature spans from the late nineteenth century to the present, reflecting a shift from taxonomic and morphological documentation toward questions of power, ecology, and interspecies ethics.

Morphology and Physical Description

The earliest detailed physical account in the Society’s record is F. N. Chasen’s 1923 note on an adult male orang-utan taken alive at Katoengou in Dutch West Borneo in 1922, which died in Singapore the following January [1, p. 257]. Chasen provides a comprehensive table of body measurements, comparing the specimen with a Paris specimen recorded by Beccari and two of Hornaday’s largest Bornean specimens [1, p. 257]. The animal stood 4 ft 7¼ in in height with an arm span of 8 ft 0 in, slightly exceeding Hornaday’s records, though girth measurements were smaller—a discrepancy Chasen attributes to the animal’s poor condition in captivity [1, p. 258]. Skull measurements are also recorded, and Chasen observes that facial breadth is not correlated with overall size [1, p. 258].

Of particular interest is Chasen’s description of the pelage, which he notes exhibits two distinct colour phases: dark sienna and light reddish-golden [1, p. 259]. The specimen bore a notably luxuriant beard measuring 5½ to 6 inches, which Chasen contrasts with Hornaday’s description of a scanty beard never exceeding four inches [1, p. 259]. This observation of individual variation in facial hair density represents one of the earliest comparative morphological notes in the Society’s literature on the species.

Earlier still, G. F. Haviland’s 1894 note on an infant Maias kept in Sarawak from July 1890 to October 1891 provides a developmental account of the species in its juvenile stage [2, pp. 204–206]. Haviland tracked the infant’s dentition, weight gain, and behavioural habits, noting in particular its instinctive self-clinging when lifted [2, pp. 204–206]. He compared the rate of teething to that of human children, concluding that the two need not be proportional [2, pp. 204–206]. The infant, which accidentally strangled itself on a chain in October 1891, had its skeleton deposited in the Sarawak Museum [2, pp. 204–206].

Captivity, Trade, and Early Observation

The records reveal that orangutans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries moved through networks of collection, transport, and display that connected Borneo to Singapore and European institutions. Chasen’s specimen was taken in Dutch West Borneo and died in Singapore [1, p. 257], while Haviland’s infant was kept in Sarawak [2, pp. 204–206]. H. J. Kelsall’s 1891 note, titled “A large mias in Singapore,” attests to the presence of the species in the city-state’s collections at that time [3]. The use of the Malay-derived term mias (also rendered Maias) alongside the scientific name Mias in these early records reflects the period’s taxonomic conventions and the local linguistic register through which the animal was known [1], [2], [3].

The conditions of captivity are documented with some frankness. Chasen’s specimen was in poor physical condition by the time of its death [1, p. 258], and Haviland’s infant met an accidental death by strangulation on its chain [2, pp. 204–206]. These accounts, while brief, provide a baseline against which later critiques of captive management and rehabilitation practice can be measured.

Rehabilitation, Power, and the Colonial Legacy

The most substantial treatment of the orangutan in the Society’s literature is the 2021 roundtable on Juno Salazar Parreñas’ monograph Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation (Duke University Press, 2018), which is grounded in over a year of participant observation at the Batu and Lundu Wildlife Centres in Sarawak [4, p. 205]. The book, which received the 2019 Michelle Z. Rosaldo Prize from the Association for Feminist Anthropology, examines how colonial-era modernization embedded asymmetrical power relations into the infrastructure of orangutan conservation, producing what Parreñas terms “arrested autonomy” for both the orangutans and the low-wage Sarawak workers charged with their care [4, pp. 204–206].

The roundtable contributors each isolate a distinct analytical thread. Alicia Izharuddin examines how gendered care is defamiliarized in a bio-emergency context, where “tough love” and forced breeding invert the softness typically associated with caregiving [4, p. 205]. Monamie Haines explores the book’s treatment of nature-culture as an inseparable entanglement and its pedagogical effects on students in Singapore [4, p. 205]. Faizah Zakaria situates the work within environmental history and questions why its radical politics remain implicit rather than explicit [4, p. 205]. Robert Cribb interrogates the multiple meanings of the Malay term bebas (freedom) as it applies to both human and non-human subjects in captivity [4, p. 205].

The discussion collectively reveals a structural paradox: programmes designed to make solitary, reclusive orangutans “wild” and “independent” are themselves products of the habitat destruction that made rehabilitation necessary, and the economic logic of ecotourism that funds the centres simultaneously confines large communities in spaces too small for their needs [4, pp. 206–207]. The colonial-era origin of orangutan conservation in Sarawak is traced to Barbara Harrisson, wife of the curator of the Sarawak Museum of Natural History and Ethnology, whose “ape motherhood” established a template of interspecies power relations that persisted into the post-colonial period [4, pp. 206].

The material conditions of habitat loss are documented with specificity. 1970s development initiatives and 1980s dam building in Sarawak directly displaced two orangutans and their caretaker at the site that became Lundu Wildlife Centre, linking infrastructure projects to the very conditions requiring rehabilitation [4, p. 214]. Sarawak’s former Chief Minister Taib Mahmud accumulated a fortune in the timber industry that decimated orangutan forest habitat during his thirty-year tenure, while the state remained among the poorest in Malaysia [4, p. 210]. The bodily risks borne by the lowest-ranked humans in the care hierarchy are illustrated by the death of the local rehabilitation worker Layang, who contracted melioidosis through direct contact with orangutans [4, p. 209].

Parreñas’ reply to the discussants clarifies her refusal to offer prescriptive solutions, arguing that doing so would replicate the colonial gesture of planning another’s liberation, and instead positions uncertainty itself as generative—a space in which new modes of relation might emerge before the window of coexistence closes entirely [4, pp. 213–214].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on the orangutan traces a clear arc from natural history to critical ethnography. The earliest contributions—Haviland’s 1894 note on an infant, Kelsall’s 1891 notice of a specimen in Singapore, and Chasen’s 1923 morphological account—are brief, descriptive, and oriented toward measurement, comparison, and taxonomic utility [1], [2], [3]. They treat the orangutan as an object of scientific observation, its value lying in the data it yields: dimensions, dentition, pelage colour, and behavioural quirks under captivity.

The 2021 roundtable marks a decisive shift in both method and concern [4]. Where earlier notes documented the animal’s body, the later work documents the social and political systems in which the animal is embedded—colonial legacies, labour hierarchies, timber economics, and the ethics of care. The roundtable positions itself within the emerging “animal turn” in Southeast Asian studies, identifying a gap between Peter Boomgaard’s Frontiers of Fear (2001) and Cribb, Gilbert and Tiffin’s Wild Man from Borneo (2014) on one hand, and the lived-experience ethnography that Parreñas’ work introduces on the other [4, p. 205]. The roundtable also draws on investigative reporting, including the Bruno Manser Fonds reports and Clare Rewcastle Brown’s Sarawak Report, to document environmental and human rights violations in the state [4, p. 214].

The contrast between the two periods is stark but instructive. The early records, for all their brevity, preserve irreplaceable baseline data on individual variation in morphology and juvenile development. The later work, for all its theoretical sophistication, depends on the continued existence of the species in a form that permits rehabilitation at all—a condition that the early records, by documenting the animal in the wild and in captivity, implicitly confirm. Together, they constitute a record that moves from the measurement of a single body to the interrogation of the systems that determine whether that body, and the species it represents, will persist.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. F.N. Chasen (1923). A large orang-utan JMBRAS 1(1): 257–259. Read on JSTOR
  2. Haviland G.F and H.N. Ridley (1894). Notes on an infant maias JSBRAS 26: 204–206.
  3. H.J. Kelsall (1891). A large mias in Singapore JSBRAS 24: 168–169. Read on JSTOR
  4. Alicia Izharuddin et al. (2021). Power, Care and Species Difference in Orangutan Rehabilitation in Sarawak: A Roundtable. J.S. Parreñas, Alicia Izharuddin, M.B. Haines, Faizah Zakaria, and R. Cribb JMBRAS 94(1): 203–215.