When animals attack, it’s usually for a pretty good reason. Often it’s because they’re trying to protect their young, or sometimes their food. And then there are the animals who attack for sheer survival, after a human hand has given them no other choice.
Enter one “activist” orangutan in Indonesia, who finally had enough and decided to fight back against the evil excavators destroying his habitat. The heartbreaking scene, which was caught on video, took place in West Kalimantan, where a construction crew was demolishing a section of the Sungai Putri Forest where critically endangered Bornean orangutans are known to live. Unfortunately for them, it’s also a popular place for the expansion of palm oil plantations and other developments, not to mention an area where logging settlements have been illegally setting up shop.
The video shows this particular animal leaping down from a large trunk and trying to stop the machine with his hands, clinging as hard as he can. He eventually is unable to hold on and falls, at which point he gets up and tries his attack again.
Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures.
We suppose the good news in all of this is that International Animal Rescue (IAR) workers were on hand, and they were able to relocate the orangutan to a protected area of forest.
“Unfortunately, scenes like this are becoming more and more frequent in Indonesia,” the organization wrote in the Facebook post accompanying the video. “Deforestation has caused the orangutan population to plummet; habitats are destroyed and orangutans are left to starve and die.”
Indeed, more than half of Bornean orangutans have lost their natural habitats due to logging operations since the 1970s, and those that survive remain in danger of being shot if they do return to their old stomping grounds once the new productions are up and running.
“Sungai Putri is home to one of the largest populations in the world and we are at a critical point for the Bornean orangutan. Without forests like these, they can’t survive,” IAR director Karmele Llano added in a statement.
Heck, with an outlook like that, we’d probably attack a big scary machine in order to survive too.