Five baby orangutans were found in a forest in Odisha, thousands of kilometres away from the tropical rainforests where the species naturally lives. All five, two females and three males, are less than a year old. And while the immediate priority is keeping them alive, their presence in the Ranakatha Protected Reserve Forest near Badapai village has raised a much bigger question, which is how did they get there?
The orangutans were found in an area that is not their natural habitat. Orangutans are native to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo in Indonesia and are highly adapted to life in tropical rainforest canopies. There is no continuous forest corridor connecting India with those Indonesian islands, making a natural arrival highly unlikely. Balasore DFO Indalkar Pratik Prakash said human intervention was a possibility, although investigators had not yet established exactly how the animals reached the forest.
“While smuggling remains a possibility, there is no conclusive evidence yet,” he said. “Since their natural habitat is tropical rainforests, they could not have migrated there naturally, indicating possible human intervention. Investigations are underway to determine how they arrived there.” For wildlife rescuers, however, the age of the five animals makes the situation particularly worrying. These are not young orangutans that have simply wandered away from their mothers. At less than a year old, they would ordinarily be almost completely dependent on maternal care. And that dependence lasts for years.
AN ORANGUTAN BABY DOES NOT JUST NEED ITS MOTHER FOR MILK
Unlike many mammals, orangutans have an extraordinarily long period of maternal dependence. Research on wild orangutans has documented nursing continuing well into the later years of childhood, with some individuals suckling into their eighth or even ninth year.
A 2017 study published in Science Advances found that nursing in wild orangutans follows cyclical patterns linked to fruit availability. Milk becomes particularly important when fruit is scarce, showing how closely maternal nourishment is tied to the ecology of the rainforest. More recent research has also shown that an orangutan mother is not simply feeding her infant. She is effectively teaching it how to survive.
A 2021 study in Scientific Reports found that mothers adjust their behaviour when their offspring ask for food, particularly when the food is difficult to process. This suggests that maternal behaviour helps young orangutans develop the feeding skills they will eventually need to survive independently. That learning is crucial because an orangutan infant has to gradually figure out what to eat, where to find it and how to process different foods.
Research on rehabilitated orphaned orangutans has made the importance of this maternal learning particularly clear. A 2023 study in Animals noted that by weaning age, a wild infant’s diet overlaps substantially with its mother’s, underlining how much dietary knowledge is acquired through the mother. In other words, when an infant orangutan loses its mother, it does not simply lose a source of milk. It loses its teacher, protector and guide to the forest.
‘THEY DEPEND ON THEIR MOTHERS FOR 6–8 YEARS’
Wildlife rescuer Sagnik Sengupta, Co-Founder of Stripes and Green Earth Foundation (SAGE Foundation), said the five infants would face enormous challenges if they have indeed been separated from their mothers. “Extremely difficult,” Sengupta said when asked how difficult it is for an orangutan baby to survive after maternal separation. “Orangutan infants depend on their mothers for food, protection, movement and learning for 6–8 years.”
The immediate challenge, therefore, is keeping the infants physically stable. But rescue is only the beginning. “Rescued babies need intensive veterinary care, proper nutrition, emotional support, surrogate caregivers and years of rehabilitation before possible release,” Sengupta said.
That last part is important. Feeding a baby enough to survive is not the same as preparing it to live as an orangutan. A young orangutan needs to learn how to climb, move through a complex forest environment, identify appropriate foods and develop behaviours that will eventually allow it to function independently. For an animal that spends much of its life in the canopy, even the physical environment provided during rehabilitation matters.
WHY A FOREST CANOPY CANNOT BE REPLACED EASILY
Orangutans are highly arboreal animals. Their long arms, powerful hands and feet and body structure are adapted for navigating trees and moving through the forest canopy. Their diet is also closely tied to the rainforest ecosystem, particularly the availability of wild fruits. That creates another challenge when an orangutan is rescued far outside its natural environment.
“Providing a diverse natural diet, climbing opportunities, adequate space, mental stimulation and social development is challenging,” Sengupta said. “Without a complex forest-like environment, orangutans can develop nutritional, physical and behavioural problems.” This means rehabilitation cannot simply be reduced to providing food and shelter. The animals need an environment that allows them to develop the physical and behavioural abilities associated with their natural lives.
For five infants who should still be clinging to their mothers, that becomes even more complicated.
THE QUESTION OF WHERE THEIR MOTHERS ARE
The most troubling part of the rescue may be the one that cannot yet be answered is where are the mothers? Sengupta suspects the infants may have been separated from their mothers before being transported.
“I am also sure after poaching their mothers, these babies have been taken,” he said, while noting that people handling orangutans in a wildlife rescue and conservation network had indicated that the animals were from Sumatra. He also said he believed the animals may have been smuggled through Bangladesh. These claims have not been established by the Odisha forest department, which is still investigating how the animals reached Balasore.
The concern is rooted in a known vulnerability of infant orangutans. Mothers are intensely protective of their young, and separating an infant from its mother in the wild is not a simple process. Himanshu Tyagi, an IFS officer, on X posted that this maternal bond needs to be understood in the context of the species’ biology. “Orangutans are among the great apes that share the same evolutionary roots as us humans,” he said.
He also pointed to the contradiction at the heart of the rescue: a species evolved for tropical rainforest life, dependent on wild fruits and the knowledge passed down by its mother, has somehow ended up in a deciduous forest in India. The implications are stark.
If these infants have been separated from their mothers, rescuers are not only dealing with five animals that need to be fed. They are dealing with five animals that have potentially lost the individual responsible for teaching them almost everything they need to know about being an orangutan.
THE TRAUMA IS NOT ONLY PHYSICAL
Orangutans rescued from trafficking or other forms of human interference can arrive in poor physical condition, but the psychological impact can be equally serious. “Rescued infants may arrive malnourished, dehydrated, injured and highly stressed,” Sengupta said.
The behavioural signs can reveal another layer of what they have experienced. “They can show fear, withdrawal, excessive attachment to caregivers and repetitive behaviours,” he said.
That is why rehabilitation has to address more than physical recovery. “Rehabilitation must therefore address both physical recovery and psychological well-being,” Sengupta said. For infant orangutans, this can mean years of carefully structured care. Human caregivers may have to become temporary surrogate figures while ensuring that the animals still develop the skills needed to eventually function without humans.
The ultimate goal in successful rehabilitation is not to make an orangutan comfortable around people. It is almost the opposite. It is to give the animal enough natural behaviour and independence that it can eventually live without them.
FIVE INFANTS, AND A MUCH BIGGER INVESTIGATION
The five orangutans are now at the centre of an investigation into how they came to be in Balasore. The forest department has not yet concluded that they were trafficked, and the possibility of smuggling remains under investigation. But their discovery has already brought an uncomfortable reality into focus.
Orangutans are not naturally found in India. They evolved in the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia, particularly Borneo and Sumatra, and their lives are built around the forest canopy and an extraordinarily long period of maternal care. A baby orangutan found alone in an unfamiliar forest is therefore a biological mystery as much as a rescue case.
For now, the five infants need food, warmth, veterinary attention and protection. But they also need something that cannot simply be supplied in a bottle or enclosure: the years of learning that would normally have happened beside their mothers.
And until investigators establish how these five babies travelled from the forests of Southeast Asia to a protected forest in Odisha, perhaps the most haunting question remains the simplest one — where did their mothers go?
– Ends
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