For her dissertation work in Knott\u2019s group, Scott wanted to learn about paternity among the park\u2019s orangutans. By analyzing DNA samples, she discovered that Rossa wasn\u2019t Ronnie\u2019s mother\u2014she was her half-sister. Rossa and Ronnie shared a mom named Veli, who hadn\u2019t been seen since 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Veli had a daughter, Vanna, who was 4 years old when the research team last spotted the pair. Now, comparing their genetic samples, Scott realized that Vanna and Ronnie were actually the same orangutan. When Ronnie was first spotted with Rossa in 2017, the older sister must have been about 12 years old, and the younger sister would have been 5.<\/p>\n
Scott, now at Smith College, says she felt like a detective putting the clues together. \u201cIt was really fun,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then it made so much sense.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
At some point, Veli must have died, perhaps of old age. The two sisters reunited. And Rossa began treating Ronnie like a daughter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor this to be the first published account of adoption in orangutans is really exciting,\u201d says Rachna Reddy, a biological anthropologist at the University of Utah and fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, who was not involved in the study. \u201cEven though we\u2019ve been studying apes in the wild for many years, there\u2019s still so much we don\u2019t know about them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For her dissertation work in Knott\u2019s group, Scott wanted to learn about paternity among the park\u2019s orangutans. By…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[187234,23388,47970,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-595601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-apes","9":"tag-monkeys","10":"tag-orangutan","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115617599627778598","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}