Single Orangutan Moms Set up Playdates for Their Kids

Being a single mom is tough, but female orangutans don’t have any other choice. As far as parenting goes, male orangutans are pretty useless. They contribute nothing more than genetic material to their offspring before disappearing back into the forest.

That leaves mom to teach their kids how to fish for termites, pick fruit, and access the other 250 odd food items that will allow them to survive on their own. This tutelage can take six to eight years, and it’s a lot of work—but that doesn’t mean there isn’t time for play. According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, orangutan moms go to great lengths to set up playdates for their youngsters.

Read more: “How Social Learning Keeps Orangutans Fed” Play is an important part of growing up, especially for social animals, but orangutans are mostly solitary. Female orangutans typically only reproduce every seven to nine years, which means their offspring are only children with no siblings to horse around with. To find out how orangutan moms network in the forests of Borneo, a team of researchers led by evolutionary anthropologists from the Max Planck Institute followed 31 mother-child pairs for 15 years, racking up more than 32,000 hours of observation.

They then applied statistical techniques to their individual movements, taking into account the characteristics of other nearby pairs. The team found that mothers who had offspring of similar ages tended to share forest space with one another and that the orangutan kids played together more often. On days of playdates, orangutans moms traveled farther.

Remarkably, they even started heading out a day in advance, then traveled back to their territory after playtime was over. According to the researchers, they relied on “forest gossip.” “Orangutans might spend most of their day alone, but they’re still embedded in a social network,” study author Odd Jacobson of the Max Planck Institute explained in a statement. From their treetop positions they can probably get a rough sense of where these neighbors are, at least on occasion.” The team does say that these playdates were rare, occurring on only six percent of studied days and play sessions only lasted around 20 minutes. (And you thought travel sports were rough.) Still, the significant costs imposed in setting them up suggests they’re valuable.

Unfortunately, they’re not sure why. Subscribe to our free newsletter. Lead Image: Tuanan Orangutan Research Project/UZH