The Iban tribals of Indonesia have a beautiful tale about the man of the woods. The father of an Iban died. His body was laid out for the night, awaiting rituals in the morning. The next day, when the son came to the corpse, he found it was not his father, but an orangutan. The father-orangutan said:

"I am your father. I am not dead, but because I have turned into a maias (orangutan), I can no longer live in the long-house. I must go and live in the forest. But because I am your father and I am joining the other maias, we must have a bond between the people and the maias.'

Across Southeast Asia, there are many such tales concerning orangutans