An orangutan extends a helping hand to a human. A beautiful scene immortalized in the photo
Among many disturbing news from the country and the world, messages like this can bring back a smile and faith in a better future. No wonder the story about the helpful orangutan spreads rapidly in the world’s media.
The photo, thanks to which we will enter this weekend with a little more optimism, was taken in one of the forests in Borneo. Its author is a photographer from Indonesia, Anil Prabhakar. You already know one of the two heroes of his photo session. The second one was an employee of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation – a non-profit organization that protects this exceptionally friendly animal species.
Interspecies friendship emerged in quite unusual circumstances. An employee of the foundation was clearing a muddy river running through areas inhabited by protected monkeys of poisonous snakes. One of them decided that the man was stuck and needed help. In one of the photographs, we see the exact moment when an orangutan reaches out to a man “in need”.
Journalists had the opportunity to talk to a man, one of the 400 employees of the foundation founded in 1991. He admitted that the orangutan had been observing his work for a long time. He also added that he did not decide to accept the offer of help and continued his task. He stated that he was not familiar with this particular individual and recalled that it was a wild animal, not a domesticated companion of man.
