Suma (orangutan)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Suma (* 1953 in Sumatra ; † September 2006 in Osnabrück ) was a female Borneo orangutan ( Pongo pygmaeus ) who lived in the Dresden and Osnabrück zoo and was a public favorite among visitors.

Life

Suma was born in the wild in 1953 on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. She was caught in the wild in 1959 at the Dresden Zoo, where she was bred (including in 1965), before decades later she no longer got along with her conspecifics. Then Suma was the in March 1992 Zoological Gardens of Osnabrück given. There she served Buschi (born December 21, 1971 in Osnabrück), who was about 18 years her junior, as a partner animal. The male orangutan lived orphaned there after the death of his mother. The two conspecifics accepted each other. Suma tried to take part in the educational games with zookeepers and imitate Buschi's feeding tricks, but did not get to his level of practice. Because Suma, unlike Buschi, was born and raised in the wild, she was considered closed to animal keepers.

On September 27, 2006, the Osnabrück Zoo announced that Suma had been euthanized a week earlier due to old age. At the time of its death, the animal was considered to be the oldest orangutan living in a European zoo at the age of 53, according to the stud book. In the last years of her life, Suma had sat hidden under a blanket in her nest and watched the outside world. The remaining male Buschi reacted disgruntled, averse and closed to the death of his partner and did not want to play with his keepers or be petted. After a year of mourning, the orangutan lady Astrid was brought from Antwerp to the Osnabrück Zoo on July 2, 2007 as a new partner animal.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Sad ... In: Berliner Zeitung , September 28, 2006, Issue 227, Vermischtes, p. 36.
  2. ↑ Rearing orangutans at zoo-dresden.de
  3. ↑ a b cf. Announcement of the death of Suma on the official website of the Osnabrück Zoo
  4. ↑ a b Mourning in the monkey house: The oldest orangutan in Europe blessed the temporal . In: Die Tageszeitung , September 28, 2006 (The Truth), p. 20.
  5. ↑ Europe's oldest orangutan is dead SDA - Basic Service German (SFO, KN), Osnabrück, September 27, 2006.
  6. ↑ Announcement about the new orangutan female Astrid from Antwerp on the official website of the Osnabrück Zoo