Woodland Park Zoo's orangutan twins turn 40

In their outdoor enclosure, they had torn up their birthday boxes and wrapping paper, and the shredded remains were all over the ground and in the trees.

The five orangutans at the Woodland Park Zoo were taking part Saturday in the 40th birthday celebration of two of them — the twins Towan and Chinta.

With the two males weighing in at about 310 pounds each (with the estimated strength of six men, and arms spanning 7 feet) and the three females at about half that weight, this was a birthday as only apes could have one. They all got presents, and they all tore them apart.

The presents were blankets — orangutans use them to sleep on, for warmth and to protect their heads from sun or rain.

They also got 1-½-foot, capped PVC pipes with food inside. The orangutans like to twist open the pipes, use sticks to pull out the food, and then like to peer through the pipes and throw them around. The pipes are made of very thick PVC.

In honor of the birthday party — and probably because it was a sunny day — zoo attendance was 7,600. The public wanted to see the large, gentle apes.

Great public interest

Life at the zoo for the orangutans is markedly different today from when Towan and Chinta were born on Feb. 19, 1968.

They were born at the zoo to great public interest, with this newspaper and radio station KVI-AM holding a contest to name them. Their names, said the zoo, are Indonesian and mean "big boss" for Towan, and "love" for Chinta, his sister.

But the great public interest back then did not translate into a change in their living conditions.

Four decades ago, the twins wound up in the Great Ape House, a sterile, concrete environment standard for zoos of that era.

Marian Davenport, 81, remembered it well.

In 1968, she lived across the street from the zoo, and for her six children, "the zoo was their front yard," she said. Back then, there was no entrance fee, no fences, no locked gates.

Then-zoo director Frank Vincenzi asked Davenport to form and supervise a staff to feed and care for the baby orangutans, on grounds that she already had experience raising six human babies.

The baby orangutans would cling tightly to Davenport as she bottle-fed them human baby formula.

"Sometimes I'd have a hard time prying them loose," she said.

Davenport remembered life in the Ape House, which also housed the legendary Bobo the Gorilla.

"Bobo was behind glass. He'd run from one side to the other, hit a wall, run back, and hit the other wall," she said. "Those things were pretty much concrete."

The Great Ape House was torn down in 1996.

Today, the orangutans live in the Trail of Vines exhibit area. It's about as natural as a city zoo can get, with large outdoor and indoor enclosures that include an artificial creek, poplars, willows, bamboo, artificial vines, and hammocks made of fire hose, strong enough to hold a relaxing male orangutan.

The human crowds on Saturday seemed to utter a steady stream of oohs and ahhs at the orangutans.

They tried to guess which were the birthday twins. They pressed digital cameras against the glass, while from the other side, the apes looked back with passing curiosity. On the zoo's Web site, there is this explanation for why orangutans raised in a nursery by humans look closely into the eyes of visitors:

" ... these orangutans have a greater interest in people and enjoy 'visiting' with them. They especially like young children and visitors who come on a regular basis. ... "

"Orangutan groupies"

The zookeepers have a term for some of the regular human visitors — "orangutan groupies."

Among those attending Saturday's party was Eric Sano, 46, a Seattle police officer.

He was 6 when he, his mother and younger brother went to the Bellevue Public Library and looked through books containing Indonesian names so they could enter the baby-orangutan-naming contest. Sano's names won, over submissions such as "Romeo and Juliet" and "Jack and Jill."

Sano looked around the parade of moms and dads and babies in strollers. He hadn't been to the zoo for a while, he said.

"All of these people came out for orangutans. It's wild," he said.

In the wild, orangutans live to 35 to 40 years.

In captivity — their daily lives monitored by zookeepers, antibiotics at the ready — orangutans can live into their 50s.

So Towan and Chinta, who have had their photos taken by the curious for 14,600 days, can look forward to at least 5,475 more.

Zookeepers say the orangutans have the ability to recognize certain words.

Apparently, "royalty check" aren't among them.

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com