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Think Lost combined with Lord of the Flies, replace humans with pre-pubescent primates and prepare yourself for Animal Planet and NHNZ's Orangutan Island.

Launched on November 2 in the United States and due to air on Animal Planet internationally in the third quarter of 2008, Orangutan Island offers 13 half hour episodes of unique docudrama from the rainforest of Borneo. Orangutan Island was produced by NHNZ's Judith Curran for Animal Planet and will be broadcast in the same prime time slot as the highly successful third season of Meerkat Manor.

NHNZ's master story tellers have created a timeless tale that follows a group of 35 Orangutans after their rehabilitation at the Nyaru Menteng Rescue and Rehabilitation Center to trace the trials and tribulations as they create a unique community on a 100-acre protected island sanctuary.

The orphaned animals have been rescued by the Borneo Orangutan Survival International and brought to the Center where they were taught forest survival skills under the watchful eye of Project Manager Lone Droscher-Nielsen.

"The series follows a group of graduates from Lone's Forest School 103. By nature Orangutans prefer to lead a mostly solitary existence but with their natural habitat increasingly under threat due to illegal logging, the last chance the graduates have at a comparatively free life in the wild is to form a community and learn to live together," Judith explains.

With access to archival footage, NHNZ crew have woven flashbacks to individual Orangutan's rescues with the present providing a unique insight into their personalities.

Adapting to life outside the Center's protective confines and accommodating their classmates' distinctive personalities forms the basis of the series which traverses the loves and lives of the main characters as they cope with sickness, intruders, snakes and each other.

Production of Orangutan Island began in December 2006.