Sepilok welcomes three new members

Security blanket: One of the newborn babies asleep at Sipilok.

KOTA KINABALU: The Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre in Sandakan welcomed three newborn orang utan over the past two weeks.

The babies were born from three rescued apes named Rosa, Cinta and Lumiud.

Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga said it was an achievement for the centre.

“The orang utan is known to have the slowest life history compared to other mammals, a factor which contributes to their threatened condition in the wild,” he said.

Tuuga said the slow reproductive rate affected its survival and the decline in its numbers took decades to recover, adding that the female orang utan only started reproducing at the age of eight or nine.

“The babies are weaned between three and six years of age but stay with their mother for as long as nine years,” he said.

Most of the orang utan brought to Sepilok were young orphans who lost their mothers, being unable to survive on their own.

The Sepilok centre develops and teaches the orphans survival skills through rehabilitation programmes.

Sepilok has more than 18 reproductive females, with a history of over 40 orang utan born since its inception more than 50 years ago.