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Did a wild orangutan offer a helping hand to a geologist who had fallen in a mud pool?

By Sarah Thompson
NO

The man in the water in a photo on social media is an employee of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. The orangutan, a 25-year-old female known as Anih, has been in the care of the foundation since the 1990s. She and the foundation employee had known each other for decades.

The man is not a geologist as the post says. He had not fallen into a mud pool, but was working in the moat that surrounds the small island where Anih lives. The CEO of the foundation postulated in an interview that the photo could show Anih asking the foundation employee for food, not offering to help him.

Anih no longer has skills to survive in the wild because she was separated from her mother when she was very young and has since been relying on human beings for food.

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Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.
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