An endangered orangutan has been called a "badass" after she survived a brutal attack, in which she was shot more than 100 times with a pellet gun, Geekosystem notes.
According to the Australian Associated Press, the primate, dubbed "Aan" by conservationists, was found on an oil palm plantation in Indonesian Borneo earlier this month with "37 pellets lodged in her head and 67 elsewhere in her body."
Though it was thought that the orangutan would not survive the brutal attack, conservationists say the brave primate has "cheated death."
(Credit: AFP/Getty)
Sadly, Aan has reportedly gone blind in one eye and has sustained "serious wounds across her body" due to the attack, the AAP notes. The head of the local government conservation agency told the news outlet that she may also lose the sight in her remaining eye and her hearing could be affected.
Due to her injuries, Aan may not be able to return to the wild.
In this Oct. 20 photo, a veterinarian from the Orangutan Foundation removes airgun pellets from a seriously wounded orangutan at the Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) station in Pangkalan Bun located in Indonesia's Borneo island, after the female ape was shot more than 100 times with an air rifle. (Credit: AFP/Getty)
This is not the first time that an orangutan entering a palm oil plantation has been attacked in Indonesia.
The primates' habitat has been threatened in recent years by illegal logging by timber companies and operators of palm oil plantations.
A Nature Conservancy study found that 750 orangutans have been killed in the past year by hunters in the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo.
In November 2011, for instance, two Indonesian plantation workers in Borneo were arrested after killing "at least 20 endangered orangutans and proboscis monkeys as a means of pest control for landowners looking to protect their crops," the Associated Press reports.
The men said they had "chased down the primates with dogs," before shooting, stabbing or hacking them to death with machetes. They allegedly told authorities that "the owners of several palm oil plantations on Borneo island [had] offered $100 for every orangutan killed and $20 for every long-nosed proboscis monkey."
According to Orangutan.org, both species of orangutans left in the wild are in severe decline and are threatened with extinction.
The destruction and degradation of the tropical rain forest, particularly lowland forest, in Borneo and Sumatra is the main reason orangutans are threatened with extinction. This has been caused primarily by human activity (intense legal logging, illegal logging, conversion of forest to palm oil plantations and timber estates, mining, clearing forest for settlements, and road construction) and also by large-scale fires facilitated by the El Nino weather phenomena.
Additionally, the illegal animal trade has been a factor in the decline of wild orangutan populations. Finally, orangutans are occasionally hunted and eaten by some of the indigenous peoples of Borneo as well as migrant loggers and plantation workers who do not have dietary prohibitions against eating primate bushmeat.
In the past decade, orangutan populations in the wild have likely decreased by 50 percent, according to the group's estimates.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates there are currently about 41,000 Bornean orangutans and about 7,500 Sumatran orangutans.
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