Orangutan

If you're an Orangutan

You are solitary, thoughtful, and deeply attached to the few you let in. Orangutans live mostly alone in the trees, make tools, build a new bed with a roof each night, and announce tomorrow's travel route in advance; you are the same kind of quiet planner. You don't need company. You do need people to stop moving your things.

Orangutan mothers nurse their young for up to about eight years, longer than any other wild mammal.

The Orangutan as a spirit animal

You think things through, alone, and arrive at good answers nobody saw you working on. You are intensely devoted to the one or two people you have chosen, over years. The flaw is that solitude is the default and other people have to come to you; you will not go to them, and you will not pretend otherwise. You are not aloof. You are just upstairs.

Grounded in how the species actually lives; nothing borrowed from anyone's tradition. Why we put it that way.

How to get along with an Orangutan

When it goes wrong: A stressed orangutan withdraws higher and stops responding; wait below, quietly, with fruit.

The Orangutan in a relationship

You love slowly, seriously, and for a long time. Orangutans form no lasting pairs, but the bond between a mother and her young lasts for years, longer than in any other animal apart from humans. You give the kind of devotion that teaches someone how to live. It takes a while.

Best matchOctopusTwo solitary, tool-using problem-solvers who work alone and prefer it; the octopus carries coconut shells, the orangutan carries leaves, and neither explains.

Handle with careAntAn ant has never done one thing alone in its life, and the orangutan has never done one thing with others; the mismatch is total.

Field notes

Every animal is placed on six personality traits derived from how the species lives. Your answers are placed on the same six, and the closest animal wins. How the scoring works

Sociability

1

Boldness

3

Energy

2

Curiosity

9

Devotion

10

Roaming

2

• The orangutan is the largest animal that lives in the trees, and the most solitary of the great apes.
• Orangutans build a fresh sleeping nest most nights and, in rain, hold a large leaf over their heads as an umbrella.
• Male orangutans have been observed giving a long call in the evening facing the direction they will travel the next morning, and then going that way.

Orangutans in literature

• Jup — The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne (1875)
• Bimi — Life's Handicap (Bertran and Bimi), Rudyard Kipling (1891)
• The Ourang-Outang — The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Edgar Allan Poe (1841)

Characters from public-domain works. Company, not a verdict.

Closest personalities

The animals whose profiles sit nearest to the Orangutan's. If you got Orangutan, one of these was probably your runner-up.

• 

  Octopus94% alike

• 

  Platypus90% alike

• 

  Owl83% alike

Other mammals

WolfRed FoxBrown BearPolar BearLionTigerLeopardCheetahElephantGiraffeHippopotamusGorillaSlothKoalaKangarooPlatypusOtterBeaverBadgerRaccoonHedgehogBatCamelDolphinSperm Whale

Among the 60

Brehms Tierleben, Alfred Brehm (1890). Public domain, viacommons.wikimedia.org.All credits