Reports

Program No.18-015

Morphological analysis of a sexual dimorphism in orangutan face

Tomokazu Kawashima

12th Febriary,2007 - 23rd March,2007

It is well known that full adult male orangutans have normally a pair of well-developed fatty cheek pad, called flanges, as secondary sexual feature. Although experimental and ecological studies of the orangutan face are frequently carried out, the anatomical approach to the orangutan facial sexual dimorphism was only a few. In order to understand it more completely, it is necessary to re-examine orangutan faces by dissection in addition to collecting a lot of data from skull measurements. Therefore, I dissected two orangutan heads, male infant and female adult, and measured a lot of skulls in Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), Berlin Museum of Natural History, and Leiden National Museum of Natural History. All various results suggest and correspond to orangutan has a sexual dimorphism with aging.

Berlin Museum of Natural History

Leiden National Museum of Natural History

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