Snake Scare: Wildlife Department Uses Rubber Cobra to Teach Orphan Orangutans - Video

New Delhi (Sputnik): Orangutans – the long-haired, orangish primates found in the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo – are deemed highly intelligent, with researchers suggesting that the human and orangutan genomes are 97 percent identical.

A video is going viral on social media where orphan orangutans are being trained to fear a snake in the wild and their reaction to seeing a rubber serpent is winning hearts.

This is how they teach #Oranguton orphans to fear snakes in wild. Using rubber cobra. Look at the their reactions. Like human kids. We are so primates. @SDG2030 pic.twitter.com/aJydbO6GJC

— Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) April 28, 2020

​Orangutan is a Malay word, and means ‘man of the forest’. There are three species of these great apes – Bornean (endangered), Sumatran (critically endangered) and Tapanuli (most endangered).

Back in 2011, scientists at Washington University's Genome Center decoded the DNA of a Sumatran orangutan, and found out the human and orangutan genomes are 97 percent identical.