Since 1971 Birute Galdikas has lived and worked in the forests of Borneo, documenting the lives of the orangutans. This text describes her groundbreaking scientific and conservation work that has been recorded in more than a dozen television documentaries. This book presents close-up portraits of mothers with their young, adolescents, combat between males, birth and death. It reveals how the traits we think of as quintessentially human are shared with our pongid relatives. It describes how Galdikas battled poachers, loggers and joined the fight against the illicit trade in infant orangutans. Some of the many individual apes she has rescued and rehabilitated are described.