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Just the Zoo of Us

96: Orangutans w/ Dr. Lara Durgavich!

Just the Zoo of Us

Ellen & Christian Weatherford

Science Communication, Pets & Animals, Zoology, Kids & Family, Nature, Wildlife Science, Animals, Science, Wildlife

4.8 β€’ 595 Ratings

πŸ—“οΈ 14 May 2021

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Join Ellen & special guest, biological anthropologist Dr. Lara Durgavich for a review of the arboreal royalty, orangutans! In this episode, we discuss how orangutans have adapted to make themselves at home in the tree tops, how we see ourselves reflected in their faces & behavior, and how we can help support orangutans in their habitats.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, everybody.

0:03.0

Hey, everybody. This is Ellen Weatherford.

0:22.4

I am your host, as usual, with Just the Zoo of Us.

0:25.5

This is your favorite animal review podcast in this week.

0:28.4

We have a brand new, very special friend.

0:31.3

I'm super excited to talk to you.

0:32.3

This is Dr. Lara Dirkovich.

0:33.9

Say hi, Laura.

0:35.1

Hello, everybody.

0:36.7

Oh, I'm so excited to talk to you. And I'm excited because

0:39.8

today we're talking orangutans, right? That is correct. We are going to talk about orangutans.

0:45.3

This is really exciting for me because tons of people have asked us to talk about orangutans.

0:49.1

And it was one of those things that was like, I wanted to make sure that we were doing them

0:52.4

justice by talking to somebody who really understood them because there's so much to understand about them.

0:58.6

They are a complex, but fortunately, well-studied species.

1:02.9

That's awesome. And you have studied them, right?

1:05.4

I have. Yeah. I did my PhD in biological anthropology at Boston University, and I did my dissertation work looking

1:14.2

at orangutan hormones and orangutan behaviors, focusing specifically on females and looking at

1:22.6

how their hormones and behaviors changed at different stages of their life. I did a lot of work with

1:29.6

orangutan urine and came out the other end knowing a lot about orangutans. Wow. How did you get into

1:36.2

doing that work? I went into grad school actually thinking that I wanted to study human paleo

1:43.7

anthropology. So basically, ancestral species of hominin

...

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