Getting back in swing with old fire hoses

Getting back in swing with old fire hoses Orang-utans will be swinging from old hoses once used to tackle fires in Cambridgeshire. Firefighters are helping to rehabilitate a group of the apes in Indonesia who have been rescued from captivity by donating lengths of old Fire hoses for their enclosure. The hose, no longer fit for operational use, was used to improve conditions for the orang-utans inside their enclosure in Sumatra to help them prepare for their return to the wild.

The apes arrive at the centre from just a few days old to mature adults in various states of fitness. But they are all mentally scarred, all having been removed from their mothers and often subjected to neglect or abuse. Cambridge University wildlife researcher Hannah Rose Trayford contacted Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service last year to see if it was possible to donate lengths of hose to the centre as part of her study into improving the animals’ rehabilitation. She said: “Fire hoses are more flexible and durable than ropes and better mimic the conditions the orang-utans experience in the wild.

“The use of Fire hoses in the enclosures has a huge effect by helping to provide the animals with not only the physiological medical care that they need to regain muscle strength and co-ordination but also to improve their psychological fitness, which goes a long way to speeding up the rehabilitation. “Overall the study showed that even non-natural items can be extremely effective in captive conditions at mimicking the conditions wild orang-utans face, which is an essential factor to successful rehabilitation.”