"Meet the Orangutans" to air 12th February 2016 on Animal Planet

UK premiere of Meet The Orangutans begins Thursday 12th February 2016, 8pm
on Animal Planet (Sky 523)

Brand new to Animal Planet next month comes ‘Meet the Orangutans’, an exclusive window into the extraordinary daily drama of the world’s oldest orangutan sanctuary, Sepilok. Filmed in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo’s tip, Sepilok is the last remaining oasis of tropical rainforest, and home to no less than 50 of these ‘people of the forest’ at any one time.

Meet the Orangutans follows the lives of residents including Peanut, Beryl, Chiquita and Gelison, as they learn the crucial survival skills necessary for their eventual release. Then there’s the ‘teenagers’ who aren’t quite as innocent and eager to learn - whether it’s weigh-ins, forest school or feeding time, there’s always the opportunity to pick locks, mug tourists, steal tools…or just hang around plotting the next heist!

The human carers, led by Brit Sue Sheward Founder and Chairperson from the Orangutan Appeal UK, are every bit as colourful too, and the jury’s still out on who rules the roost – the staff or the apes.

On top of the day-to-day madness, OAUK's primatologist – who heads the charity's ground breaking research project, operating out of little more than a shack and living on tinned food for months at a time – will assess just how adaptable, how extraordinarily intelligent, and how much like humans these gifted creatures really are. He overseas a range of intelligence tests, that would stump some humans, displaying their brilliant ruses for getting one over on the visiting tourists, and their whole system of communication.

Uncovering intriguing facts about their psychology and biology, ‘Meet the Orangutans’ reveals how much like us these animals really are.

The eight-part series kicks off on Animal Planet (Sky 523), Thursday 12th February 2016 at 8PM.