The real story
Researchers had known of orangutans in the Batang Toru forest of North Sumatra for years, but a skull from an orangutan killed in 2013, together with genetic studies, showed they were a separate species: Pongo tapanuliensis, described in 2017. It was the first new great ape species named since the bonobo in 1929. Its frizzier cinnamon hair, different skull and its own long calls set it apart.
Fewer than 800 remain, all in roughly a thousand square kilometres of hill forest split by roads, farms and a hydropower project. Conservationists are replanting degraded land to reconnect the forest blocks and studying canopy bridges for the gaps; similar rope bridges nearby have already been used by Sumatran orangutans. It is listed as Critically Endangered.
