Ah Meng

I was not sure how I would feel about having breakfast with orangutans in Singapore this morning. It is the old issue of whether the orangutans are being held captive and exploited.

The breakfast is held at the Ah Meng restaurant inside the zoo, named after the zoo's long-time orangutan, a local celebrity with a large bronze statue commemorating her next to the river.

The breakfast itself is nice, but pricey at 29 Singapore dollars, but the attraction is obviously the five orangutans who sit and eat on a log and have their photos taken with visitors.

You can stand close enough to them to get a whiff of that deliciously fusty smell of orangutans, what a scientist I know calls "rawa," the Indonesia word for swamp.

The breakfast gave me a chance to observe the orangutans and their keepers before I talk to their curator the next day.

The orangutan enclosure is nearby. It is a small island with an aerial system of ropes so that the orangutans can range off the island but not reach the ground.

This is very different conditions to those I saw for the orangutan Sisi at the zoo in Manila, who just died on June 21. Sisi had a small bare cage to herself with no other orangutans or no form of stimulation, which are deadly conditions for a creature with the mind of an orangutan.

I watched how the orangutans at the zoo in Singapore related to the keepers. The orangutans tell you a lot that way.

Orangutans, of course, relate well to any supply of food, but these orangutans seemed relaxed around the keepers and the way that the keepers touched them without resistance showed some intimacy and respect.

I also noticed how well the orangutans were relating to each other, aside from the large orangutan Charlie pacing between plate glass. Charlie doesn;t get along well with others, like some people I know. He had a troubled history before he came to the zoo.

The other orangutans were very chumming, a a sign that the zoo knows what it is doing and is doing something right.The orangutans moved freely and chose to come together in intimate ways.One joined another orangutan who was fishing down a hole with a pole. Another two were jostling and embracing each other and engaging in mock bites and wrestling. All of which are signs they were not feeling constrained.

Ah Meng must have been an interesting character. There is a wall of photos with her that shows she mixed easily with people, even if they were just human. Some photos showed her with the curator Sam.

I was mesmerized by the bronze statue of Ah Meng by the river. A lot of work had gone into trying to capture her spirit. I wonder how close it is to the real Ah Meng.

The creatures at the zoo are cremated when they die. The bronze statue of Ah Meng is at the waterfront where she is buried. It's a nice touch to send someone off to eterny with a river view.