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Few animals interest us as much as our relatives the great apes, and among these primates orangutans have a special appeal. The orangutan ("man of the forest" in the Malay language) is highly intelligent, creating and using tools in the wild, solving problems and puzzles in captivity--and manipulating symbols in a way that makes some scientists suspect that this fellow creature might someday master language.A natural history of orangutans by one of the world's foremost researchers on the species, this book provides an introduction that is at once engagingly accessible and in-depth. Here readers will encounter orangutans, the only great apes in Asia, in their ever-shrinking habitat, the rain forests of Sumatra, Indonesia, and Borneo.This book delves into their history, their habits, their endangered status, and what studies--many conducted by the author himself--have told us about how orangutans learn, think, and feel.