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01/10/2018 11:01 PM

Following Great Orange Apes through Indonesian Swamps: Tales from a Year of Orangutan Research in Central Borneo


Katherine Meier spent a year doing field research at the Tuanan Orangutan Research Center in Indonesia. Photo courtesy of Scranton Memorial Library

On Thursday, Jan. 25 at 7 p.m. at the Scranton Memorial Library, Madison, Madison native Katherine Meier will recount her year of studying orangutans in Indonesia. Her presentation includes stories and videos that focus on what it’s like to become immersed in Indonesian culture while studying the lives of world’s only Asian great ape.

Meier will discuss what it was like to live and work for a year in the world’s most-populated Muslim country. She will explain what the day-to-day life of a field primatologist is like—and exactly how and why one would study orangutan ecology.

Registration is preferred at www.scrantonlibrary.org or by calling 203-245-7365

Meier attended Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. She graduated in 2016 with a major in anthropology and minors in biology and studio art. Her focus was on physical anthropology and she has done field research on wild primates in Madagascar and Indonesia. Having recently returned from a year in the field, she is currently applying to Ph.D. programs in the hopes of continuing in this area of research.

An orangutan is a great ape that lives in Borneo and Sumatra, Indonesia. The forests they live in, peat swamp forests, are disappearing rapidly, due to logging and encroachment by oil palm plantations. Photo courtesy of Scranton Memorial Library
Borneo is home to about 45,000 orangutans. Photo courtesy of Scranton Memorial Library
Sumatra is home to only about 7,500 orangutans. Photo courtesy of Scranton Memorial Library
The species of orangutans in both Borneo and Sumatra are considered critically endangered. Photo courtesy of Scranton Memorial Library