Ah Meng Memorial

Ah Meng (circa 18 June 1960 – 8 February 2008) (Chinese: 阿明) was a female Sumatran orangutan and a tourism icon of Singapore. Ah Meng was originally from Indonesia and was kept illegally in Singapore as a domestic pet before being recovered by a veterinarian in 1971. She was then eleven years old and was given a home at the Singapore Zoo. Ah Meng was the head of her small clan, which lives in a large enclosure with about twenty other orangutans. She had five children, twelve grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. She belonged to the Sumatran orangutan species, a rarer breed of orangutan now critically endangered due to illegal logging and poaching. There are about only 7,500 Sumatran orangutans left in the wild in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. Ah Meng died on 8 February 2008.