The development of ranging skills and social learning in immature Sumatran orangutans

One of the major challenges that juvenile orangutans face when the start leaving their mothers is learning where and when they can find food. This project investigates different aspects of the development of ranging competence, including cognitive maps, planning and decision making in daily movement trajectories. Analyzing how individuals learn to navigate through their home ranges in terms of optimizing food intake, travel distances and nest locations, will provide further insight into orangutan cognition.  For this project, we rely on long-term ranging, behavioral and environmental data that have been collected at Suaq Balimbing since the 1990ties, and recently collected nutritional data.