'We couldn't save the endangered orangutan - so we ate it'

AIpha · Nov 12, 2013

Orangutan meat 'tastier than pork, beef'

The West Australian November 11, 2013, 9:14 am

Villagers in Borneo who cooked and ate an endangered orangutan described the meat as delicious.

"Hot meat like venison, tough, but tasty - tastier than beef and pork," one of the men said.

The Daily Mail reports the villagers, who were photographed slaying the animal, claimed the orangutan after it had been shot by hunters, who had mistaken it for a deer.

Ignasius Mandor, 50, said they couldn't save the 20-year-old ape and decided it was better to eat it than leave it to die in the forest.

After eating the meat, Mr Mandor dried the orangutan's skull on the roof of his house. Photo: Sax Rohmer.

Three men were arrested by the Indonesian Natural Resource Conservation Agency after the incident last week.

Agency chief Siti Chadidjah Kaniawati said an investigation found nothing to indicate the orangutan died from a gunshot wound.

The photographs emerged at the start of Orangutan Awareness Week, organised by the Orangutan Foundation.

An one-year-old orangutan named Hang Lipo walks out from a blood collection centre in Malaysia. Photo: Reuters.

The great ape's habitat in Borneo has shrunk dramatically due to deforestation to make way for palm oil plantations.

The orangutans are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes. They can currently only be found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.

Both orangutan species are considered to be endangered due to aggressive poaching, habitat destruction, and the illegal pet trade.
<object id="flashObj" classid="clsid

'We couldn't save the endangered orangutan - so we ate it'

AIpha

Alfrescian (Inf)