The orangutan's choice indicates it knows more species of plants and can identify them.
I was thinking about the many species of insects that eat select plants during the larval stage, for toxic protection in the adult stage. But that was an evolutionary process in instinct. I do not believe hit and miss random evolutionary development is the sole mechanism. Some kind of intelligence beyond instinct is at work.
The orangutan example doesn't appear evolutionary, but the product of trial and error and reason.
I know orangutans drink Nepenthes cocktails, and in rainy Borneo that is unlikely for quenching thirst. Nepethes is a pitcher plant with modified leaves with "pitchers" full of liquid digestive proteins that dissolves insects, lizards and even mice that fall in, for their nutrients. The US has Sarrecenia pitcher plants in the Carolinas, and Darlingtonia in northern California bogs that do the same thing. In Borneo, orangutans get the victim nutrients in the Nepenthes cocktail.
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