A 12-year field study at Suaq Balimbing shows some juveniles compensate for limited individual exploration by closely watching others, helping them build a wider range of foods before independence at about 8.5 years.
Researchers tracked 21 young Sumatran orangutans over 12 years and logged about 7000 learning instances to compare social and individual learning.
After observing another orangutan with food or tools, youngsters often practiced the behaviour themselves for roughly 145 minutes, reinforcing learning.
Feeding records (about 4700 hours for 13 individuals) were used to estimate dietary breadth at independence and link it to learning style.
Orangutans depend on a wide range of skills to survive in complex rainforests. They must know which foods are safe, where to find them, and how to process hard-to-access resources such as seeds inside tough fruits. Young Sumatran orangutans spend more than eight years with adults learning those skills before becoming independent at around 8.5 years.
They combined those observation data with detailed feeding records — roughly 4700 hours for 13 of the juveniles — to estimate how many and which foods each individual had learned to eat by the time they reached independence.
The juveniles varied widely in how they learned. Some relied more on social learning — watching mothers and other group members — while others spent more time exploring and testing foods on their own (individual learning). The study found three practical outcomes:
How the behaviour looks in the field
Researchers describe the post-observation activity as practice similar to what human children do after seeing an adult demonstrate a task. Revathe Thillaikumar, a lead author, characterises that follow-up time as practice, including her quoted remark: "Yeah, it's practice." Field colleagues noted that variability in learning style is substantial between individuals and may reflect personality differences or differences in early maternal care.
For orangutan juveniles in complex forest environments, multiple learning strategies increase chances of acquiring the diverse feeding skills needed for independence. Where individual exploration is limited, attentive observation of others can partially make up the gap. The results connect detailed behavioral observation to measurable outcomes in feeding repertoires at independence.
The study and results were published in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.adz6415).
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