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“I told him, in Malaysia, if you see an orangutan, the orangutan will kill you first, you won’t kill the orangutan first. Right?”
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Orangutans do not kill humans, says Sabah Wildlife director
By Olivia Miwil – January 20, 2022 @ 4:07pm
KOTA KINABALU: Orangutans are unlikely to kill people, said Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga today.
In fact, he said, the primates in the wild would naturally stay away or hide upon seeing humans in the forests.
“It is their instinct not to go near people whom they may perceive as a dangerous species.
“The same goes for other wildlife such as monkeys and other animals in the wild,” he told the New Straits Times.
Augustine, however, said, there might be a possibility that an orangutan would attack if it was being provoked when one threw stones at it or tried to injure it.
He added that there was no report of people being killed by orangutans so far.
“There were cases where people had been injured at Sepilok (Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre in Sandakan), but it was merely being bitten by the animal and they had minor injuries.
“Furthermore, unless you go to Kinabatangan, forest areas or zoo, it is unlikely for humans to stumble upon an orangutan,” he said, adding that there were about 11,000 orangutans in Sabah based on a survey done in 2000.
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Zuraida’s ‘orangutan will kill you first’ comment goes viral
Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin’s spirited defence of palm oil in Malaysia, including her assertion that they were not harming the orangutan population and the primates were more likely to kill humans than the other way round, has gained social media attention.
The speech took place on Jan 5 but an excerpt began circulating on TikTok recently. It was subsequently shared by former Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli, a PKR vice-president who is presently inactive in the party.
In the excerpt, Zuraida said she visited Mecca recently and learnt that school books in Arab countries had put an unflattering light on the palm oil industry.
“The other thing I discovered while I was in Mecca – I just came back from my umrah. I was talking to our ambassador there, so he told me that in the schools in the Arab countries which his students went to, the books are still talking bad about our palm oil because we kill orangutans.
“I told him, in Malaysia, if you see an orangutan, the orangutan will kill you first, you won’t kill the orangutan first. Right?” he said.
Zuraida maintained that the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) have proper procedures in handling orangutans.
“Perhilitan has its policies. Do you think they simply go and kill orangutans? Even lions and tigers, when they see, they don’t kill,” she said.
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weehingthong 