UK, Wednesday May 27, 2009 Sky News
Indonesian zoos are starving orangutans to encourage them to take food from visitors, according to conservationists.
The non-governmental Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP) said some apes were so distressed they were eating their own vomit.
The organisation's capitivity expert Luki Wardhani said: "The zoo managements have abandoned the principles of animal welfare."
He added: "We documented several stress symptoms and abnormal behaviour.
"They bump their own bodies, vomit and eat it again, urinate and drink their own urine, lick their own nipples and sit without expression."
A COP study of five zoos in Java found many orangutans were deliberately malnourished to make it easier for visitors to feed them.
COP capitivity programme manager Seto Hari Wibowo said: "Public feeding should be stopped.
"The visitors often feed the orangutans unsuitable food and the zoos fail to monitor this."
The study, which included both public and private zoos, also discovered orangutans kept in cages instead of enclosures.
International conservation group The Nature Conservancy estimates there are around 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80% of which live in Indonesia.
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