hmmm, well let's see here.
When I lived in Sulawesi, we had a few fun pets. One was a kus-kus (pronounced just like the food "couscous") which is a sort of sloth/marsupial. It has very sharp claws and a long tail that it will hang upside down from sometimes. They eat leaves. The one we had was called "Lucy" and she was all brown unlike the one in the picture.
One of my good friends at school had a loris and our dorm also had one for a while. These things are small enough to cling to your wrist or sit on your shoulder. Their fingers are like little suction cups. They eat bugs and stuff so they're nice to have around the house. Nocturnal mainly, so they are sleepy in the day.
Lastly, at my high school we had a baby orangutan for a month or so. It wasn't something we went out looking for. Some poachers came in from the jungles trying to sell it, having shot the mother to catch the baby.
The little guy had cuts on his head from when his mum fell out of the tree. Anyways, they knew we were "orang barat" (westerners) and figured we might want an exotic pet, so they tried to sell it to my science teacher. Initially he turned them down, but when they came back around, he figured we might buy it so as to save it from a life of being some rich persons tame monkey, treat its wounds, and then give it to the Indonesian Forestry commission to be re-released into the wild or live on a game preserve.
Anyways, we called him Jack and he was a precious little thing. Baby orangutans have to be hanging onto someone at all times, so he was quite literally a handful! My science teacher was his primary caretaker so he had to even sleep with the little thing cuz it couldn't stand to be alone for so much as a second. lol. The great part was when he taught classes. We'd have Jack in the classroom...usually being held by one of us girls until he'd mess his diaper, let me tell you...changing a diaper on a very STRONG (these things are all muscle), clingy monkey who doesn't want to be separated from you for a minute is not real fun.
But for what it's worth, that is one of my happiest memories of going to boarding school in Borneo.
Sitting in class with a baby orangutan on my lap staring up at me with those huge eyes. We gave him to the game preserve eventually and I hope he is happily swinging through the trees somewhere now.
