This Article is From Feb 09, 2016

Stop What You're Doing and Watch These Baby Orangutans go to School

Stop What You're Doing and Watch These Baby Orangutans go to School

Screengrab taken from video posted on Facebook by Great Big Story

Picture this - a bunch of adorable little orangutans being wheeled in on barrows to attend school.

This is no joke. It is actually what happens at the International Animal Rescue Center in Ketapang, Indonesia. Here, abandoned baby orangutans are trained to climb trees, taught what to eat, what not to eat and basically coached on how to survive in the wild. Quite a holistic curriculum, wouldn't you say?

The school has about 102 orangutans, many of whom were illegally kept as pets and had to be rescued.
 

Among the first few lessons taught at the school is how to take off from the ground and how to spend time in trees. "It might seem like a simple thing but actually some of these orangutans have been living with people and are chained up or have lived in small cages. At the beginning they're afraid to climb trees," explains Karmele Llano Sanchez, program director at the rescue center, in a video.

"If we don't care about orangutans, I think it's even more difficult that we are going to care about any of the other species. If they get extinct in Indonesia they will be extinct from the face of the world - so we have to do something about this now," says Ms Sanchez.

These little beings deserve to be cared for, especially in schools such as these so they can be released into the wild where they belong. If you have an iota of doubt, just watch these little cuties in the video below.
 
 

At the International Animal Rescue Orangutan Center, orphaned baby orangutans learn what it takes to survive in the wild. Because c'mon, just look at these little guys.

Posted by Great Big Story on Tuesday, 2 February 2016
.