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Locals know how to eat

To find the choicest menu options, migrant orangutans watch how the locals eat

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, and Leipzig University analyzed 30 years of observations on a total of 152 male migrant orangutans on Sumatra and Borneo and showed that migrants learn about unfamiliar foods in their new home range by ‘peering’ at experienced locals. Peering—the act of intensely observing others at close distance—was most frequently seen in migrants when they observed locals consuming foods that were rare or hard to process.

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