Orangutan on the Edge (Full Episode) | Mission Critical | Nat Geo Animals

TIM LAMAN: In this area, orangutans are coming into conflict with people because the forest is shrinking, and they don't have enough food, and they're, you know, starting to come into people's gardens. This reported pet orangutan here, the person who has it says that they found it without its mother. And now we're gonna go along on the rescue. A baby orangutan looks like it would be a great pet. But then they grow up to be a huge, 200-pound, powerful animal that's incredibly dangerous. [camera shutter clicking] So how long have they had him? WOMAN: Four weeks. TIM: Four weeks, huh? WOMAN: Yeah. TIM: Do you believe the story? What do you think? How would a little baby this small be by himself, right? Doesn't make sense, does it? Orangutans like this are ending up as people's pets because the forest is disappearing! It's a sad story, really, but one that we have to tell. [baby orangutan cries] [whooping] NARRATOR: Their name translates as 'person of the forest.' They share 97% of our DNA. But unlike us, orangutans are vanishing. TIM: There's no easy way to say this, but orangutans are getting dangerously close to extinction in the wild. If we don't do more to protect them, in a few decades, they're going to be just down to a few stragglers. So, we've got to do something more about it. NARRATOR: National Geographic photographer Tim Laman is embarking on an expedition to unlock the still-mysterious lives of our tree-dwelling cousins. TIM: We're still learning new things about orangutan behavior, and at the same time we're losing populations that haven't even been documented yet. [shrieks] NARRATOR: Tim believes we can't protect orangutans if we don't understand them. And every photo provides a new piece of the puzzle. TIM: My mission here is to get photographs that'll make a difference for orangutan conservation. And I think a few really powerful photos can make a difference. NARRATOR: Today, deep in the pristine rainforest of Indonesia's Gunung Palung National Park, Tim's on the trail of something so elusive, it's almost never been filmed-- a newborn orangutan in the wild. TIM: Toto, Toto misa, copy? [radio static] Nope, no answer, so I guess I'll go up to the ridge and see if we can pick it up from up there. Alright. NARRATOR: To find the baby, he has to find the mother. TIM: Trying to find Walimah. She just had her first baby about a month ago. And so I just came all the way back out here to Borneo to try to get some pictures of her with her new little baby. In theory this should be an easy one, 'cause we already have a team following her, and we're just trying to find them. But radios sometimes don't work that well out here. NARRATOR: There are only two places on Earth to find orangutans in their native habitat-- Sumatra and here in Borneo, the third largest island on the planet. But orangutans in Borneo are losing their forest homes. Fires started to clear land for agriculture burn out of control. Orangutans lucky enough to survive the fires wander starving through barren landscapes. And motherless babies have to be raised by humans, many destined for life in captivity. TIM: Whoa. This hill is slippery, man. NARRATOR: Areas of dense rainforest protect the orangutans that are left. TIM: What the heck, man? Toto, Toto misa, copy? Toto does not seem to be reading me, so I'm gonna use the old-fashioned calling technique. Woo! MAN: Woo! TIM: Oh! They're back down that way. Alright, we go back. This orangutan, Walimah, is a very special one for me, because she's one of the orangutans that we've followed the longest. We actually followed Walimah ever since she was born. I first photographed her when she was three weeks old, and we've been, you know, following her and photographing her on and off ever since. [camera shutter clicks] Last summer, she was 15 years old, we got a urine sample from her for a pregnancy test kit and tested positive for the first time. And then we've been waiting in anticipation this last couple months for her to have her baby. [whispering] We're almost right under her right now. There she is, I can see her through the leaves. I can't see the baby yet. Going to find a little better window here. Filming orangutans is definitely not easy. They live in this really complicated 3D environment where it's hard just to see them. So they're often filmed at sanctuaries. They're sort of easy to film there, and a lot of films have gone that easy route. But I'm not doing that here. I'm trying to photograph orangutans in a completely wild state. I saw a tiny hand! I don't have a good view of her at all yet, she's hidden in the foliage. But I just saw a little baby hand kind of come into view around her back! ♪ ♪ Alright, starting to get a few shots here, this is good. Oh, where'd she go? Oh! Good view of Walimah. But little baby is just out of view there. The good thing is I know she sees me by now, and she hasn't given any sign of alarm. So, that's good. I think she remembers me. NARRATOR: After hours of pursuing Walimah and her three-week-old baby, Tim's persistence pays off. TIM: Ah! I just got a nice shot of the baby and the mom. Really close of baby on mom's belly, kind of reaching out and touching the mom's hand. And the mom kind of responding, and putting her hand on the baby's head. It's really nice. Look at that little girl. Yeah, I think all parents can relate to that, you know? NARRATOR: This is the beginning of a special relationship between Walimah and her baby. TIM: Orangutans only have one baby every six to eight years, the largest gap of any mammal. And the young ones spend those years with their mothers, learning how to survive in the forest. NARRATOR: But Walimah's baby has entered a world with little room for wild orangutans. TIM: This is what we call the buffer zone around the national park. NARRATOR: Tim is looking for signs of the top threat to orangutan survival-- deforestation. TIM: If anybody asks... WOMAN: Yes. TIM: We're trying to get good views of Gunung Palung. Well, we certainly found a bleak-looking former rainforest. Wow, look how all that smoke is just like spreading over the lowlands, look at that, making that so hazy. This is the kind of thing that's worrisome. You know, 'cause right over there is the national park where we study orangutans. And right over here we've got a forest fire burning. NARRATOR: Orangutans rely on the rainforest for food, travel, and protection. Destroying it is a death sentence. TIM: I've never shot anything like this in Borneo. Freshly burned hilltop, you know, overlooking a beautiful rainforest. Just the contrast is so striking, you know. We don't want that to turn into this. [clicking] Look at this tree. It's like a dramatic sculpture, a monument to the rainforest that used to be here. Alright, go that way. NARRATOR: As recently as 1973, tropical rainforests covered an estimated 75% of Borneo. Today barely half of the island is forested, with less than 12% suitable for orangutans. For Tim, it's a call to action, the race is on to document wild orangutans before it's too late. TIM: Where's she going now? NARRATOR: Photojournalist Tim Laman is tracking an endangered orangutan and her baby, to uncover the secrets of their life in the rainforest. TIM: You know, there are so few orangutans left right now that every individual really matters. We really don't want to lose this chance to keep learning about orangutans in the wild. NARRATOR: Orangutans spend their lives almost entirely above us. Trees are their highways, bending with their weight as they travel through the rainforest canopy. Youngsters who aren't heavy enough get a little extra help. And when orangutans need rest, trees become their beds. TIM: Orangutans make a new nest every night to sleep in. So, wherever they happen to be, it's starting to get dark, they just find a convenient tree with nice-sized branches and turn them into a platform and sleep there. NARRATOR: Every behavior Tim documents is another step in understanding a species on the brink. And Gunung Palung National Park is an ideal setting for his research, harboring one of Borneo's largest orangutan populations. But orangutans are losing ground, in large part because of one plant. TIM: This is the future of Borneo's rainforests. NARRATOR: These seedlings will grow into oil palms. The oil extracted from their fruit will make its way into cereal, cookies, candies, crackers, chocolates, and chewing gum, mascara, moisturizer, shampoo, soap, and biofuel. Borneo produces nearly a million tons of palm oil per month. The national park and its 2,500 orangutans are currently protected from commercial agriculture. But oil palm plantations are pressing in on the borders of the park. TIM: My goal here is to try to get a shot that shows what the buffer zone around this national park has turned into. Used to be continuous forest going across this whole region. And now, the park has got these, you know, masses of oil palm around the borders. Over the little corridor of forest along the edge of the river, looks really beautiful, like you're in the middle of the rainforest. But then as soon as you fly up over this corridor, boom, you just see oil palm plantation. Wow, this is dramatic landscape. Oil palm going on forever. In the background, we can see another river, which is the border of the park. And then in the distance we can see the mountain of Gunung Palung. So, in that shot you can really see how the oil palm is just coming right up to the park border within a couple hundred meters. NARRATOR: As protected lands are cut off from each other, orangutans lose the ability to migrate between forests. They become more vulnerable to fire, hunger and poaching. TIM: I want people to see the bigger picture about what's happened to habitat in Borneo, and how these remaining forest areas are so important now for orangutans. NARRATOR: And Tim isn't alone in his mission. He works with a team of researchers based in the heart of the national park. Leading the efforts here is biological anthropologist Cheryl Knott. She's also Tim's wife. CHERYL KNOTT: I first came here in 1992. I just really fell in love with the place. We're super deep in the jungle, into the heart of Borneo, you could say. And for the most part, it's still very intact forest, quite pristine forest. And it's great habitat NARRATOR: Cheryl's team of students and research assistants track all the wild orangutans that pass through this area. TIM: They're the ones that are out here all year long, following orangutans every day. That's why they have these little Handycams, and they've been getting some really cool stuff. NARRATOR: They captured this footage of Walimah from 2014, when she first reached sexual maturity. She started flirting with several males, including Chodet, the dominant male in the region. She mated with Chodet, leading to her first pregnancy. Now Tim is photographing Walimah and her month-old baby, looking for images we've never seen of orangutan behavior. TIM: I want to see what she eats and how she eats it. I want to see how she travels, how she's interacting with her baby. Ah, where's she going now? The hardest thing about life of a baby orangutan seems to me to be just like hanging on to mom! It's pretty crazy the way mom will just travel through the forest sometimes without holding on to the baby at all. Walimah is on the move, covering wide distances each day in a never-ending quest for one thing--food. TIM: Orangutans here eat more than 200 different kinds of fruit, maybe more than 300. That's their main diet. NARRATOR: But they don't only eat fruit; they also snack on leaves, flowers, even termites. CHERYL: They eat so many different food sources. Every day they feed in trees that we've never seen them feed in before. TIM: Sometimes there's a lot of really nutritious fruit available, other times, not so much. But they have to take what they can get. NARRATOR: This search for food explains why orangutans, alone among primates, tend to be solitary creatures. CHERYL: Most of the time they're feeding on small trees that can't support a big group of orangutans in one tree. So, you have to have them spread out amongst different trees NARRATOR: The fate of orangutans is forever linked to their habitat-- nearly every tree plays a role in their ability to travel and feed. And orangutans rely on the forest in ways we're still discovering. TIM: Oh, that was amazing. I think I just recorded a new behavior, or at least one I haven't heard about. When you see an orangutan rub a particular leaf on its eyes, you know, it could be something that's been recorded in chimpanzees and gorillas. These leaves could have some medicinal properties or something, and she actually chose this tree to apply these leaves to her eyes for some reason. Maybe she has an eye infection or something about her eyes are bothering her, and she's actually trying to medicate herself. NARRATOR: As they grow more accustomed to Tim, Walimah and her baby come closer to the camera than ever before. TIM: She's only about ten meters away! She's getting really close, she's right there. She's gotten really comfortable with us. Getting some great views of the baby. [click] The baby's trying to, looks like she's trying to kiss her mom on the lip, but she's actually biting it. [chuckles] That was the first little video sequence I got of them really kind of face-to-face interacting. I'm not trying to film them in a way that will pretend that they're just like human mothers, 'cause they're not. We're trying to see what orangutan lives are like in the wild here. It's really heartwarming to see a little baby with its mom doing well out in the wild. That's the hope for the future of orangutans right there. NARRATOR: But in the months that follow, that sense of hope turns to fear. TIM: We hadn't seen Walimah in a couple weeks. We can only speculate and try to put clues together, but we don't know what happened. She was attacked by something, we don't know what. NARRATOR: An orangutan mother has been nurturing her newborn baby in the threatened forests of Borneo as photojournalist Tim Laman captures unique images of their lives. TIM: I spent several weeks here and did a lot of photography of Walimah with her new baby. I was able to get some great shots, and I thought that it was going to be a great story to continue to document her raising her baby. NARRATOR: Now the female orangutan Walimah has gone missing. Wild orangutans are always on the move, so it's not unusual for them to disappear for weeks at a time. But it's not like Walimah to be gone for so long, and the research team is worried. Somewhere in this threatened wilderness, Tim hopes to track her down. TIM: The thing about finding orangutans in the rainforest is that they occupy a pretty large area, and finding an orangutan is difficult! Even searching every day for, you know, a week, there's, like, no guarantee that we'll find Walimah. NARRATOR: But then the researchers spot something unexpected. TIM: We have a crazy number of orangutans right here! We've got five orangutans. NARRATOR: No big trees are fruiting nearby, so it's rare for these solitary animals to be in one place. [bellows] But with less and less room in the forest, this may be a sign of things to come. In the confusion, it's hard to tell who's who. NARRATOR: But one ape catches Tim's eye. CHERYL: Yeah. TIM: She is totally missing two of her toes and part of her foot. And she's lost her baby. TIM: You want to see? CHERYL: So tragic. Orangutans don't lose their babies very often. Yeah, we've never had a baby die before. TIM: It's like incredibly sad, because we were hoping we would watch her raising her baby. CHERYL: Right. TIM: You know? CHERYL: The fact that it's Walimah, it's almost, you know, like it's someone you know that lost their baby, and how you would feel about that. You know, very, just horrible. NARRATOR: It's a loss this endangered species can ill afford. A female orangutan will only give birth four or five times in her life. Now, Walimah has lost her first baby, and her own life could be in jeopardy from the wound on her foot. How did this happen? Tim brings his photographs back to camp to review the evidence with Cheryl and researcher Kat Scott. TIM: You can see that these are her two, first and second toe, with like the third and fourth toes are missing. Only the thumb is still there. CHERYL: The toes just look totally useless now. KAT SCOTT: Yeah, I mean, with her injury, she's lucky if you can call it that, that she still retains the heel and mostly the thumb, because it stills means that when she's using it she can still grasp. TIM: I mean, look at this. NARRATOR: They agree that something, or someone, attacked Walimah, and she likely lost the baby in the fight. TIM: And we've never seen a female that got attacked before. NARRATOR: Beyond that, it's a baffling mystery. TIM: I want to get any more clues that we can about what might have caused it. NARRATOR: A stealthy and lethal predator does prowl the forest canopy-- the clouded leopard, Borneo's biggest cat. But the team questions whether Walimah's injuries are consistent with a leopard attack. TIM: The clouded leopard does not have the power to bite through the bones of an orangutan. They don't bite chunks out of their prey, right? That's not the way cats attack. The other big animals that we have are the sun bears. And they use their powerful claws to rip open trees and rotten logs. CHERYL: They defend themselves. And so if they feel threatened, they might attack. NARRATOR: There's evidence that Borneo's shrinking forests are leading to more run-ins with sun bears, who've attacked loggers and even researchers here in the national park. But against orangutans, sun bears have a major disadvantage. TIM: I don't think sun bears go from tree to tree. An orangutan could easily get away from a sun bear. CHERYL: Exactly, that's a good point. TIM: So easily. NARRATOR: So if it wasn't a sun bear or a clouded leopard, who's responsible? As Tim continues to document Walimah's recovery, there's another possibility he has to consider-- that Walimah's injury might have come from an outsider to the rainforest. [chainsaw buzzing] TIM: Hear that sound in the distance? Chainsaws. NARRATOR: A mother and baby orangutan were a sign of hope for a threatened species. But now Walimah is badly injured, and her baby gone. As photographer Tim Laman looks for answers, he finds new evidence of invaders to this protected national park. TIM: People are harvesting wood from the park, unfortunately. NARRATOR: Indonesian officials are trying to crack down on illegal logging here, but chainsaws can still be heard in the forest. TIM: Might be one of the really valuable trees, like an ironwood tree, that they're gonna carry out in pieces. NARRATOR: Tim spots a shipment of wood floating out of the park. But the poachers have slipped away. TIM: So, this is the way small-scale loggers are bringing wood out of the forest. Floating it out in rafts. NARRATOR: Illegal loggers destroy more than trees. They've been known to attack adult orangutans they find here. TIM: It's tempting to grab a baby. Kill the mother and capture the baby, try to sell it as a pet. [horn honks] NARRATOR: When that happens, the babies often turn up in nearby villages. And conservation groups have to act quickly to rescue them. TIM: Having an orangutan pet is definitely a short-term proposition, and just a way to ruin the life of the animal. If this orangutan lived with these people for several years, then it would get so big that it would be condemned to a life behind bars, basically. NARRATOR: This isn't Walimah's baby, but he's nearly the same age. TIM: How long have they had him? How would a little baby this small be by himself, right? He doesn't even have teeth yet. The only way an orangutan this small would be by itself is if somebody killed the mother, right? Right? Somebody has to have killed the mother. He's getting really upset going to the vet here. You can tell the little guy, he's like, he's already attached to this woman. He's been with her for a month, so he doesn't want to leave his surrogate mother. He likes your stethoscope a lot! WOMAN: It looks like nipples. TIM: Ha! It looks like nipples. It's just unfortunate 'cause this poor little baby orangutan, cute little guy, he's now destined for probably six to eight years in captivity at this rehab center, where, if he's lucky, he'll learn enough skills from the other orangutans and the keepers there to be able to survive in the wild and maybe get released into a forest someday, If there's any forest for him to be released into. You know, it just makes you realize how valuable every baby orangutan in the wild is. NARRATOR: Could this illegal pet trade explain what happened to Walimah and her baby? It's not likely, since poachers tend to kill the mother first. In such an encounter, Walimah would almost certainly have died, like the mother of this orphan. Instead, the threat to Walimah appears to have come from closer to home. The scar on her foot provides a vital clue. TIM: It looks like the perfect shape of the jaw of an orangutan, really. And when she's licking it, you can see, how similar it is to a big bite mark. So, one possibility that we have to consider is that it was another orangutan that somehow attacked Walimah and bit her foot. NARRATOR: Female orangutans shy away from conflict, but males are brawlers. They use kissing sounds and displays of aggression to intimidate rivals. [howl] And they wage vicious battles over rainforest territory. CHERYL: Males, they fight each other, they bite each other's hands and feet, so they often are missing, you know, fingers and toes. NARRATOR: Researchers even use scars from past fights to identify males. And earlier in her career, Cheryl videotaped the last moments of a male named Rocky dying from a fight with a rival. But would a male orangutan attack Walimah and her baby? CHERYL: We know that chimpanzees and gorillas, males will kill infants. Because if they kill the infant, then that female will start cycling again sooner, and she can get pregnant again sooner. [orangutan grunts] NARRATOR: Infanticide has never been documented in orangutans. But Cheryl and other researchers have suspected it occurs. CHERYL: The most likely explanation is a male attacked her and her infant, trying to actually kill the infant. And in the process, you know, she's probably kicking him. And he grabbed onto her foot and then bit off a chunk of her foot. NARRATOR: The researchers aren't able to identify which male did this to Walimah. But the most aggressive orangutan in the area is Chodet. TIM: Chodet definitely has a reputation of being the big, tough guy around here. He has charged and threatened members of the research team. And he gets a little bit of a kick out of making them run away. [howls] NARRATOR: Yet as the likely father of Walimah's baby, he doesn't have a motive to hurt his own offspring. There are other males that pass through the forest. They're in enemy territory, and they have to be ready for battle. And as orangutan habitat shrinks, there could be more males fighting over smaller spaces. Now, Walimah is being followed by one of these unknown males. CHERYL: He's following her. She seems to be harassed by him. Could be that male that attacked her. NARRATOR: Walimah's story has turned from promise... ...to tragedy. Each new baby in the wild is crucial for research and for orangutan survival. So, Walimah's loss ripples through the forest. TIM: She's lost her baby, she's missing half of her foot, and now she's got this male following her. Walimah's right down here where he can keep an eye on her. She's like in the tier below. Wow. Here he comes. CHERYL: Sometimes males harass females. He started following her definitely. And it appeared maybe she didn't really want to be followed. TIM: She probably just wants to be left alone. NARRATOR: The team observes without interfering, anxious to see if the male is a threat to Walimah. TIM: On the first day that this male was following Walimah, we thought that he was kind of just harassing her. But then it turned out the next day that she seemed to, you know, like having him around, and in fact, sometimes she would follow him. So they kind of took turns taking the lead, and it looked like it was a mutual decision to hang out together. NARRATOR: Tim follows Walimah and the male, who researchers are calling Ned. They engage in what looks like a budding romance. TIM: They're right next to each other. For three days, Walimah and this young male have been traveling together. Her foot looks like it's healing up. It's a lot less swollen than it was when we found her. And so we're documenting that phase of her life now. NARRATOR: Tim hopes Walimah and Ned will take their courtship to the next level. But today, they're motivated by a different kind of appetite. And they're about to reveal a view of orangutan life in the wild we've never seen before! TIM: Wow, that's a lot of figs. NARRATOR: The orangutans are feeding in a towering fig tree, nearly 200 feet high, just steps away from the research camp. A fig tree is the forest's most vital food source, fruiting at times of the year when other trees don't. Animals converge from far and wide to harvest its bounty, and they keep coming back until its branches are bare. TIM: It is producing a huge crop of wild figs that are edible by orangutans and leaf monkeys and macaques and squirrels and all kinds of animals coming to feed at these figs. And if you think about it, even the loss of one tree, one fruiting tree, could be important to the survival of orangutans. NARRATOR: Walimah and Ned somehow knew that this majestic tree would be fruiting at this time. And after they've had their fill for the day, Tim gets an idea. TIM: I think we need to go rig a line in that fig tree. Climbing trees in the rainforest is something I've been doing for years, for research and for photography. I get a rope up in the tree using a bow and arrow, shoot a fishing line over a branch and then use that to pull up a big climbing rope. NARRATOR: Tim's aiming for something new-- an image he's never been able to capture in 25 years of wildlife photography. TIM: One shot that I really want to get is to show the orangutan in the context of its habitat, up in the canopy, at the orangutan's level. NARRATOR: That's much harder than it sounds. Orangutans are too smart to approach a tree with a human in it, so Tim plans to use remote cameras instead. ROBERT: It seems like if you set those camera traps, you should set it on the other side. TIM: She's gonna climb up that fig root, right? ROBERT: Yeah, exactly. TIM: Yeah. ROBERT: She went up, right up. TIM: You know, orangutans are the largest canopy-living animal in the world, so if you don't get up here in the trees to get a sense of what things are like from their perspective, you can't really tell the story of the lives of orangutans. NARRATOR: Tim's betting that Walimah and Ned will come back for more figs tomorrow, without noticing the cameras. TIM: Last time I tried camera traps in the canopy, the orangutans were just a little too smart. They noticed the camera, they were a little wary. That's why I went up this time after the orangutans are well away from here, and I'm using some really small, little cameras. So, see if I can fool 'em. Alright, coming down. NARRATOR: The remote cameras are in place. And Tim is ready to record amazing new images if the orangutans return. NARRATOR: Tim Laman has scaled a monument of the rainforest, an almost 200-foot-tall fruiting fig tree, to rig remote cameras high in the canopy. It's a chance for a unique image of endangered orangutans TIM: I've been really wanting to get this image of looking down on an orangutan and showing them in their habitat. 'Cause I really want to get this point across, the habitat's what's so important, and the orangutans are just one part of it. NARRATOR: The orangutans should climb past the cameras and never know they're being filmed, but it'll only work if they come back to the same tree tomorrow. Early the next morning, it looks like Tim's gamble is paying off. TIM: I see a bunch of movement right over there. Whoa! Yeah, that's an orangutan, okay. Alright, I'm gonna hit record. Alright, we're rolling. Now one of them is coming this way. He is definitely going to this tree. Oh, man, this is gonna be awesome if it works. The male orangutan, Ned, is climbing toward the remote cameras. TIM: He's on the trunk, he should be in the frame. He just went past the first camera, he didn't see it, but I think the first camera caught him. NARRATOR: And he's followed by Walimah, the orangutan Tim has been filming for more than 15 years. TIM: Go left, Walimah, go left, go left! Yes! Oh, man, I think she's got to be in frame for some of that. NARRATOR: After the loss of her baby and the injury to her foot, Walimah is being wooed by Ned and successfully navigating the rainforest. TIM: Aw, man, I'm so stoked this is working. NARRATOR: But to see what the cameras captured, Tim and researcher Wahyu Susanto have to check the footage. TIM: Oh, yeah, right in there, yeah. WAHYU SUSANTO: Okay. TIM: Okay, here she comes. Now she's bending the tree. Climb on. NARRATOR: Walimah does appear at the bottom of the shot. TIM: Okay, that's pretty sharp. NARRATOR: Until she climbs up the wrong side of the tree. TIM: Ugh! Alright, we'll see what happens on the next one. WAHYU: Oh! NARRATOR: The second camera angle doesn't show orangutans, only macaques. TIM: Aww, nice. Aww, look at that. NARRATOR: And they put on quite a show. TIM: Aww! [laughter] That's hilarious. Well, we got some good animal behavior this morning, up there with the macaques. Alright, well, let's take a look at the other camera. NARRATOR: Tim has one more camera to check. TIM: Oh, look, look, there he is, here he comes. NARRATOR: It's Ned, posing for the camera from a dizzying height. TIM: Isn't that crazy? An orangutan shot like you've never seen before! NARRATOR: A single ape against the backdrop of a fragile ecosystem. Both in more danger now than ever before. Very real threats encircle orangutans and the forests they depend on for survival. But an orangutan like Walimah gives us reason to hope. Researchers tracking Walimah have filmed her mating again, five months after losing her baby. She may once again become a mother, passing on the secrets of orangutan life to a new generation and to us. TIM: You know, when you see an orangutan, you can't help feel a connection there, because we're so closely related. So, anybody that has spent any time observing orangutans feels that we need to protect them for the future.