Thanks to your incredible support, Asto and Asih are thriving in their journey toward freedom! These two playful, adventurous young orangutans may be different in personality, but they share a strong bond and love spending time together in Jungle School.
Asto and Asih playing at Jungle School
Asto: The Confident Explorer
At 7-8 years old and 20 kg, Asto is independent, strong-willed, and always eager to push the limits—sometimes giving the keepers a hard time when it’s time to return to her night enclosure! She prefers to ignore human care, focusing instead on her forest skills, climbing high into the trees to forage for wild fruits like figs, longans, and shrub brambles. She’s even taken on a leadership role, often encouraging Asih to follow her up into the canopy.
Asto has been making great progress in nest-building, vocalising and foraging—important skills for her future in the wild. She is eating many types of wild foods including fruits, leaves, flowers, bark, young shoots and insects. She enjoys all types of enrichment, especially jungle browse, termite nests, and peanut butter-filled leaves, and is always eager to test her strength with different challenge-based activities. Her thick, beautiful coat and strong limbs show just how healthy and active she is. With her growing confidence, she’s becoming increasingly impatient for her next step toward release—often trying to sneak away into the forest whenever she gets the chance!
Asih: The Curious Mischief-Maker
At 6 years old and 16 kg, Asih is playful, incredibly curious, and always up to something! While she’s a bit more wary of certain people, she also loves investigating new things, often rolling on the ground to get the keepers’ attention or attempting to steal their belongings. Unlike Asto, Asih prefers to stay closer to the ground, where she’ll gather jungle browse and build nests. But when Asto calls her up into the trees, she happily follows to eat and play together.
Asih is developing well, learning to renovate her nests and expanding her diet to include various wild foods including fruits, young shoots, leaves and insects. Like Asto, she loves enrichment activities, particularly anything involving sweet treats like durian. She’s also starting to use kiss-squeaks, a sign that she’s building her communication skills.
When these two aren’t wrestling, chasing, or playing together, they both enjoy hanging out with their favourite keepers, Dinda, Taufik, and Cana. Their playful antics and strong friendship make them a joy to watch, and it’s clear that their skills are developing beautifully.
Your generous adoption of Asto and Asih is helping them prepare for the wild, and we couldn’t do it without you! Thank you for being part of their journey.
