Orangutans are human beings' closest relatives. They have a DNA structure that is 97 percent the same as ours and are the world's most intelligent animal with more advanced learning and problem-solving ability than any other animal.
But the orangutan is in jeopardy of being wiped out by the humans they so closely resemble.
An Indonesian-based conservationist says the orangutan could become the first great ape to become extinct in the wild in modern times and it could happen in as little as 10 years.
Ian Singleton has been working with orangutans for over 20 years and says the link with our own species is clear.
He is impressed with what he sees at Auckland Zoo but back home in Indonesia where he runs an orangutan sanctuary; the situation is far from healthy.
“In Borneo we could easily be losing 5000 a year. In Sumatra we're probably losing several hundred a year. We only have about 6000 left, so we can't afford to lose a few hundred a year,” he says.
And it is not just the orangutans who are suffering.
“Where I live is probably the only place in the world where you find orangutans, tigers, elephants and rhinos all in the same piece of forest and they all have the same problems. Right now we've got more tigers than ever being captured in pig snares at the edge of the forest, we've got more elephants being poisoned than ever before and we've got more orangutans being taken captive and coming into our centre than ever before. It's an escalating problem.”
Singleton says the cause of the problem is clear; the unchecked destruction of the Indonesian rainforest for palm oil plantations and illegal logging. Singleton has been invited to New Zealand to raise awareness of the palm oil industry and the effect it's having on the environment.
“The message is there's room for a palm oil industry but you don't have to convert forest to do it, you need to go somewhere else. If there are legal problems you've got to solve those problems,” he says.
Singleton is part of a group calling for compulsory labelling of all food products that contain palm oil. The substance is now in ten percent of all supermarket products, but Singleton says Indonesian farmers have seen little in the way of financial benefits.
The orangutans in Auckland Zoo remain blissfully unaware of the destruction of their homeland, but just how much longer their relatives will continue to have a home in the wild depends on the sometimes questionable intelligence of their human cousins.