Orangutans are illegally captured and sold as pets, causing immense individual suffering and driving wild population decline. Understanding this trade helps efforts to end it.
Orangutans taken as infants suffer profound trauma from witnessing their mothers death and losing the decades-long learning period they require. In captivity they are often chained, confined in small spaces, and fed inadequate diets. Released orangutans that lacked maternal learning cannot survive in the wild without extensive rehabilitation. The demand for pet primates sustains poaching and deforestation that further threatens wild populations.