Birute Galdikas
anthropologist

World's foremost authority on orangutans

"What I have learned from orangutans is that we humans must not turn our backs on our own biological heritage. Modern society promotes the ideal of the rugged individual. For men you have the Clint Eastwood persona--the Marlborough Man. For women you have single moms raising their kids alone. The ideal Western male rides into town, fights the bad guys, falls in love, and then heads off into the sunset. He is strong and solitary just like an orangutan but he represents an evolutionary dead-end. Many of today's problems are a result of abandoning our human biological roots. We must look to our distinctive gregarious human heritage; living and working in family groups and communities if we want to be successful. Otherwise we are just stressed out 'orangutans' in an urban setting."

The Person 

Birthdate  May 10, 1946
Birthplace  Galdikas was born in Germany while her 
                      parents were enroute from Lithuania to 
                     Canada. She grew up in Toronto.
Residence  Coquitlam, BC (Spends half the year in 
                      Borneo)
Office        Simon Fraser University

Family Members   
  ¥ Father Antanas Galdikas (retired contractor) 
  ¥ Mother Filomena Galdikas (retired nurse) 
  ¥ Spouse Pak Bohap, Dayak rice farmer in Borneo, 
                     tribal President and co-director of the 
                     Orangutan Program there.
  ¥ 2 brother and 1 sister
  ¥ 3 children

Title  Professor of Anthropology

Status  Working

Degrees           
  ¥ BA 66 UBC and UCLA Psychology/Biology 
  ¥ MA 69 UCLA Anthropology 
  ¥ PhD 78 UCLA Anthropology

Awards           
  ¥ PETA Humanitarian Award 1990 
  ¥ Eddie Bauer Hero of the Earth 1991 
  ¥ Sierra Club Chico Mendes Award 1992 
  ¥ United Nations Global 500 Award 1993

Mentor  Louis Leakey

Character  Patient, determined, loyal

Favorite music Indonesian native folk songs

Other interests
  ¥ Children
  ¥ Reading
  ¥ Walking
  ¥ Indonesian culture

The Story 

The sweat pours down her face. She feels thirsty, not so much hungry. Swatting at mosquitoes, Dr. Birute Galdikas balances on a slippery log--"The logs are always slippery. I don't know why, but they always are"--trying to avoid the thorn vines and toxic bark in the dark dank rainforest. She stands waist-deep in tea-coloured swamp water, her joggers and jeans soaking wet. Two pairs of socks, one tucked under and one over the jeans keep out leeches and other unspeakable menaces of the bog. She's wearing a khaki long sleeved shirt with lots of pockets and a cotton jungle hat she bought at an army surplus store.

Catching her breath, she spots two magnificent humongous male orangutans standing face to face, glaring at each other's massive cheek pads. They are ready to fight for the chance to mate with the female that Galdikas has been tracking for days. Actually, she can only glimpse their shifting shadowy forms in the dense foliage. The sounds are horrific snarling, grunting, loud and frightening. They wrestle and tumble, smashing through the brush, trying to bite each other on the head and shoulders until one flees into the bush. Moving forward to see, Galdikas snaps a twig distracting the other one. Suddenly, he grabs two thick vines, swings down until he hangs only a metre above her head and stares into her eyes, so close that her nostrils tingle from the stale odour of orangutan sweat.

In 22 years of jungle observations, she's had only a handful of such close encounters, so rare are orangutan's meetings with humans or even their fellow apes. But this fellow's message was clear "Leave me alone."

Galdikas has learned more than any other human being about what it means to be an orangutan, and the cardinal fact is that they like to be left alone. An adult male's range is at least 40 square kilometres and he can spend weeks loping slowly from tree to tree eating fruits, nuts, insects, leaves and bark without ever meeting any of his kin.

"I've always wanted to study the one primate who never left the Garden of Eden," says Galdikas. "I want to know what we left behind."

Her conclusion our biologically recent developments of complex tool-making, language, and social institutions have removed us from the slow paced, isolated but extremely stable lifestyle of our prehistoric ancestors in the 'garden'. And we must not forsake these evolutionary roots, for it is only our distinctly human social ties that can keep our natural animal greed in check, preserve our environment and maintain our mental well being.

History

When Birute was 12 years old she loved to go into the wilder sections of High Park in Toronto and pretend she was a Huron or Iroquois native slipping through the woods, at one with nature. She would spend hours like this, quietly and secretly observing the wild animals in the park. Ever since she was 5, Birute wondered where human beings came from. She knew they came from ancient apes but she wanted to know more. She

  ¥ Got university degrees in psychology and        
     anthropology. 
  ¥ Went to meet Louis Leakey and got his support to set 
     up an orangutan research station in Borneo. 
  ¥ Lived in the jungle observing orangutans for 23 years. 
  ¥ Founded orangutan support groups all over the world. 
  ¥ Became a professor at Simon Fraser University. 
  ¥ Wrote articles for National Geographic, Science and 
     other journals and has just finished a book.

The Science

Birute Galdikas is the world's leading expert on orangutans, the great apes that live in the rain-forests of Borneo. She is an Anthropologist. Anthropology is the study of human beings, but Galdikas is looking to our ancestors, the great apes to help understand the mysteries of human nature.

When she was 22, Galdikas met Dr. Louis Leakey who is famous for discovering fossils of early humans in Africa. Leakey and the National Geographic Society helped Galdikas set up a research camp in Borneo to study orangutans. Although she grew up in Toronto and spends several months a year teaching in Vancouver at SFU, Galdikas has been living in the rainforest among the orangutans for the last 23 years.

1. The Rainforest

The tropical rainforest is one of the most stable ecosystems on the planet. A huge variety of plants and animals thrive there, and nothing has changed for millions of years. This is why the common ancestor for all apes including humans may have been somewhat like an orangutan. Orangutans have no serious predators except humans. Their dietary knowledge of the irregular fruiting patterns of tropical plants highlights their intelligence. It also explains their solitary lifestyle and the eight-year interval between births. A big animal needs a lot of foraging territory without too many others around.

2. Structural Brachiators

Orangutans are structural brachiators which means they are built to swing from branches with their upper limbs, but they have become too heavy to move quickly like this. Adult orangutans are the largest tree-dwelling animals on earth, averaging about 100 kilograms for males.

3. Food Collecting

The mother is collecting sweet habu-habu bark for her baby, one of over 400 types of food orangutans enjoy in the rainforest. Galdikas has tried many herself. One way she has learned to spot orangutans in the dense foliage is by the sound of dropping fruit peels and pits.

4. The baby is reaching for the food.

Through the repeated transfer of food between mother and baby, young orangutans learn to process food. They watch and imitate. They learn by trial and error.

5. Babies

Baby orangutans cling to their mother's fur until they are 4 years old. They are very dependent and remain with the mother for nine years. Females have perhaps 4 offspring in a lifetime. Orangutan males live solitary lives, appearing briefly to mate. The orangutan's natural life-span is unknown, but in zoos they have lived for up to 60 years.

Activity 

Try being a physical anthropologist and make an activity budget for an animal you can observe.

You'll Need
  ¥ A focal animal. It could be a pet, a human being or a 
     squirrel in the park. 
  ¥ A notebook, a pencil and a watch.

What to do

  ¥ Observe your focal animal for at least one hour noting the time and duration of every activity. Note what he/she does, how he/she holds things, posture, utterances, everything. Make two columns one for the exact time and one for the activity. For instance

1102 Left hand picks up cup 110205 Sips about 5 millilitres

Afterwards, break down the activities into categories like Eating, Moving, or Resting, and add up how much time the subject spent on each. Categories can be divided further. For eating, show time spent on each type of food. Finally draw a graph.

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