It’s not easy being a homo sapien. We have to go to work every day, sitting in front of a bright, glaring screen for eight hours, or else doing something that’ll make our feet hurt. When we get hungry, we can’t just eat: we have to buy the food from a shop, which costs money that we’ve earned from working. The food is wrapped in plastic and shipped in from miles away. We get two days a week to relax, which is often spent doing admin or washing our clothes. It goes on like this until we die, which also costs money when you factor in funerals and debt.
Not so much for the orangutan, who – according to Netflix’s new David Attenborough-narrated documentary, Secret Lives of Orangutans – is one of our closest living relatives, sharing “nearly 30 physical characteristics with us”. Unlike us though, their days are largely spent snacking and grazing freely (adult male orangutans can eat about 8,000 calories a day, just in fruit and termites), or otherwise swinging from tree to tree. Plenty of orangutans, Attenborough informs us, spend their lives never touching the ground. Theirs is an existence of leaves and boundless leisure, of berries and sheltering from tropical rain.
Secret Lives of Orangutans is frequently fascinating. We watch as eight-year-old Eden has to learn how to survive on her own when her mum shifts her focus on to an (unbearably cute) new baby orangutan. We learn that orangutans make their own leafy beds every night, each with their own style and sometimes including pillows. We see how male orangutans tend to holler through the jungle, letting nearby neighbours know about their future travel plans, as well as the fact that they are available for fighting and mating. Is this how we’d live without the ceaseless demands of capitalist society? It’s hard to say.
Aside from the odd bit of rough-and-tumble, don’t expect a huge amount of drama. The 80-minute documentary is aimed at all ages, and keeps things sweet and lighthearted throughout – perfect hangover viewing, essentially. “Despite their size and strength, these are gentle, thoughtful, problem-solving creatures,” says Attenborough in his distinctive, soothing tones, the camera panning to an orangutan shuffling through the branches with a termite nest in his mouth. Birdsong and string quartets simmer in the background, which makes it impossible not to feel completely relaxed while watching this emerald treetop universe, filmed in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia.
As Attenborough tells us, we’ve only really been able to peek into the private lives of these apes more recently (for over 20 years, they have been observed by scientists of The Orangutan Research Project, who now have access to new filming techniques including the use of small drones). In that sense, being able to get so up-close and personal to these creatures in the wild – zooming in on a baby’s thumb gripping its mother’s hair, the way their expressions change when sensing approaching danger, their eyelids getting droopy as they succumb to sleep – feels like an immense privilege. “Orangutans are normally solitary, but those living here are remarkably social,” says Attenborough. “They watch and learn from one another, and by doing so, have created a unique culture.”
Secret Lives of Orangutans is not the place to come if you’re expecting adrenaline-packed dramatics. Even the fights between fanged males are only brief and alluded to. And the documentary doesn’t quite reach the astonishing visual and audio heights of some of wildlife TV’s more showstopping offerings, such as the BBC’s Planet Earth III, or Netflix’sOur Planet II. Even so, this is gentle yet captivating viewing; a beautiful glimpse into a world we don’t often get to see (and one that we’ve already lost so much of. In the past 20 years, a staggering 80% of the world’s orangutan habitats have disappeared due to palm oil deforestation and relentless human development).
Will you be watching with bated breath? Probably not. But will you emerge with a renewed appreciation for the magnificence of our planet and its furry, tree-dwelling inhabitants? Absolutely.
• Secret Lives of Orangutans is on Netflix.
