Dewa has grown into a gorgeous juvenile male orangutan with an absolutely sweet disposition, making him one of the favorites of the care-giving team at the OFI Care Centre. Dewa is currently housed with his best friend, Ari, a large, gregarious orangutan. The two are frequently seen playing together and sharing food. Unfortunately, due to Ari’s size and difficulties in enticing both him and Dewa back from the forest to the sleeping enclosure at night, the two can no longer be released on a daily basis as was the case in the recent past.
While Dewa is released for the day he acts like the ‘King of the Jungle’ roaming around the forest exploring and adventuring by himself just like a wild male orangutan. Despite his smaller frame when Dewa comes across other young male orangutans on daily release, he is always ready to engage and display his dominance. However, Dewa is particularly gentle and sweet with his caregivers. Combined with his handsome face, the sweetness of his nature garners much attention from the enrichment and care-giving teams.
Over the last few years Dewa has started to blossom and is growing beautiful long hair on his back and arms, in addition to his already impressive orange beard! He is going through the natural stages of orangutan development. He is moving from juvenile status to sub adult male status. The secret to his gorgeous hair might also be his highly varied diet of forest leaves like simpur, pumping, kalakai, and even papaya leaves, which his dedicated care-givers harvest for him on a daily basis. He also ardently forages for these leaves himself when he is in the forest. Dewa’s talent with choosing leaves extends to his nest-making abilities, both in the forest and in his sleeping enclosure. Every afternoon, Dewa, like the other orangutans at the Care Centre and Quarantine, receives multiple branches of Acacia leaves that he expertly fashions into a night nest. Sometimes he chews on young Acacia twigs from his nest as an evening snack.
With your continued support, we hope to release Dewa back to the wild. He will eventually find a home range as dominant male and truly become the King that he already is!