Orangutans at Pondok Tanggui

Our next orangutan viewing after Tanjung Harapan was at Pondok Tanggui, another feeding station within Tanjung Puting national park.

On the way to the feeding station we saw this guy hanging out near the ranger station, snacking on some fresh bananas and some less fresh jackfruit that looks a little long in the tooth (jackfruit is Jenny's favorite... ok, it's her least favorite.  Next time you talk to me, you'll have to ask me what she said about jackfruit after trying it, as it's not fit to print on this family blog):

There was some inter-species mingling going on, too:

While we were at the Pondol Tanggui feeding station, we were lucky enough to see this giant, dominant male orangutan come in for a snack.  We thought the one we saw at Tanjung Harapan was big, but this guy dwarfed him.  Look at those cheek pads!  One of the guides said he was 27 years old.

He looked really calm and relaxed, but if you looked closely, you could tell that he was keeping an eye on everything going on around him:

This little squirrel dared to jump up on the platform while the big guy was up there, but he was one of the only ones:

Look at the size of his neck flap.  His neckflap brings all the girls to the yard:

Like I said above, not many other orangutans dared to get on the platform while the big guy was up there (with his eyes on them, see above).  There were several orangutans hanging out in the trees surrounding the platform, just waiting their turn...  this guy below, though, couldn't wait but wouldn't approach the platform, instead choosing to go straight to the ranger's basket:

I love this mom and baby, biding their time:

This fellow, in particular, was really upset about the big guy taking so much time on the platform.  He was swinging through the trees somewhat violently, breaking large branches and throwing them down, and making a lot of noise, including this weird "kiss squeak" noise that orangutans make when they're upset/nervous:

Finally, a mom and baby ventured down to the platform, but they were still pretty wary about pissing the big guy off while grabbing bananas:

After a while the big guy took to the trees. It's hard to believe that the trees didn't just break under his weight...  As you can see from the (back lit, sorry) video below, he used his weight to sway trees back and forth in order to travel in between them.  Pretty cool!