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8/19/2024

Topic Reading-Vol.4500-8/19/2024

Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Zoo enlists breastfeeding mothers to help orangutan
Orangutans are great apes that live in the rainforests of Borneo and Suatro. They eat fruits mainly but also eat vegetation, bark, honey, insects, and bird eggs and live for over 30 years.
Orangutan mothers primarily feed their babies through breastfeeding. Newborn orangutans rely entirely on their mother's milk for the first six to eight months of life before being introduced to solid food. In a zoo in Dublin, Ireland, a 19-year-old orangutan gave birth to a male baby at the end of July. She previously had two babies in 2019 and 2022 but didn’t provide any care to them at all, so they died. In order to encourage the mother orangutan to feed her new baby, the zoo carers asked volunteer mothers to show the orangutan mother how to breastfeed babies in the hope of teaching her how to feed her new baby when it arrives. They also showed her videos of other mother orangutans feeding their babies. As a result, the orangutan exhibited better maternal care towards her new baby than before.
Read the article and learn about the efforts that zoo carers and volunteer mothers made to encourage an orangutan mother to breastfeed her new baby.

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