Leif Cocks is the founder of the Orangutan Project, the world's foremost not-for-profit organisation supporting orangutan conservation and rainforest protection.
Q
Are interactions with wild animals in their native environments a life-changing experience for many travellers?
A
Wild animals have evolved over millions of years to a caricature of something that is truly beautiful. That's why people laugh at the "funny monkey" and say – "look he is showing off". To paraphrase a saying – "An orangutan is a dunce in a classroom, but a genius in the rainforest". We measure intelligence by our own standards, however by some standards orangutans are far more intelligent than humans, such as their spatial-temporal memory. That is remembering where things, such as fruiting trees, exist in both time and space. When you see an orangutan in the wild, where its intelligence has been shaped for its unique environment, you can perhaps for the first time see the humanity in its eyes. In fact, you will find it's a person looking back at you, not an animal at all. orangutan.org.au
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