Orangutan

Overview

Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were originally considered to be one species. In 1996, they were divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan and the Sumatran orangutan ; a third species, the Tapanuli orangutan, was identified definitively in 2017. The orangutans are the only surviving members of the subfamily Ponginae, which diverged genetically from the other hominids between 19.3 and 15.7 million years ago.