A photograph of an adopted orangutan sits alongside other family photos on a mantlepiece in the UK. Incorporating named adoptees’ images into family photo collections is not an uncommon practice among orangutan adopters in the US and UK, and often reflects their sense of symbolic or virtual kinship with ‘their’ adopted ape(s). As one of our interviewees put it, ‘I had the charity send a picture of the orangutan I had picked out and my mum framed it and has it up with our family pictures. I told her it’s her new kid!’
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