News Life

Gone fishing, orangutan-style

Red apes in Borneo catch fish, sometimes with simple tools.

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

MINNEAPOLIS — Orangutans swim about as well as they fly, but research on three Indonesian islands shows that these long-limbed apes nonetheless catch and eat fish.

GRABBING A BITE An orangutan in Borneo plucks a catfish from a pond. A researcher who observed the apes catching and eating fish says that the earliest members of the human evolutionary family may have done the same.