What role does environmental settings play in behavior? This is what a recent study published in Scientific Reports hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated behaviors between wild and captive orangutans, specifically regarding their exploration habits. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand how environmental factors influence cognitive development and performance, specifically as they age in life.
For the study, the researchers analyzed exploratory object manipulations (EOM) events on wild orangutans between 2007 and 2020 at Gunung Leuser National Park in Indonesia and zoo-housed orangutans between 2021 and 2023 at Leipzig Zoo and Dresden Zoo in Germany and Zoo Zurich and Basel Zoo in Switzerland. A total of 33 wild orangutans had 6,478 EOM events observed over 363 observation days aged between 0.5 to 76.7 years, while a total of 24 zoo-housed orangutans had 6,640 EOM events observed over 134 observation days aged between 0.6 and 49.4 years.
In the end, the researchers found that EOM events were more pronounced in zoo-housed orangutans than wild orangutans, while a specific age that EOM events began was the same between both groups. The study notes how these findings could help advance research regarding cognitive development and performance among zoo-housed animals when comparing them to human behaviors.
“Our study shows that orangutans in zoos not only explore more, but they also explore differently,” said Dr. Isabelle Laumer, who is a cognitive biologist and primatologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and lead author of the study. “What’s especially fascinating is that even when exploring the same kinds of objects, zoo-housed orangutans showed a richer repertoire of actions and were more likely to use tools or manipulate multiple objects at the same time.”
What new discoveries about environmental settings and behavior will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Scientific Reports, EurekAlert!
Featured Image: Wild orangutan named Eden. (Credit: S. Vilela/Laumer et al. Scientific Reports (2025))
