Monti is growing bigger and bigger and now spends all her time out on the islands, foraging during the day and making a nest to sleep in at night. Orangutans on the islands do not come back to the cages at night, and here Monti is thriving. She now has a boyfriend, called Pungki, and he and Monti spend a lot of time together.
Spending so much time with Pungki, a great nest builder, has improved Monti’s nest building skills considerably, and although always good at this, she has shown great improvement in the last six months. She is a good forager, able to find fresh fruit and often catches insects to eat, so we hope these combined skills will put Monti in good stead when she is, we hope, eventually released back in to the wild.
Monti is a very active and popular orangutan, and will play with anyone, though she is still very forceful about which keepers she will allow near her. One aspect of her personality that is becoming more obvious is how assiduously clean Monti is, and how important this is to her, to the point that if she gets any dirt on her fur, she will moan and spend a lot of time trying to clean herself. Keeping clean is obviously a challenge in the tropical rainforest, so this is something Monti might have to get over as she continues her journey to the wild!
