When staff at Dublin Zoo learned Mujur the orangutan was pregnant, they were happy about the chances of preserving the endangered species, but worried she might fail again to bond with her new baby.
The 19-year-old female seemed to lack maternal instincts and had failed to breastfeed either of her last two infants, born in 2019 and 2022, and both died.
When she became pregnant for a third time, the staff recruited new mothers to show Mujur how to breastfeed.
The orangutan was “extremely interested in watching the women feed their babies through the glass, even mirroring some of their actions”, the zoo said.
Pic: Dublin Zoo
A midwife from the breastfeeding team at the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, Lizzie Reeves, organised for 30 mothers to show Mujur how it’s done.
She told the Irish Times: “The first person to help us was my friend Nora and her baby Elodi.
“Mujur gathered more bedding, sat up at the window with her head in her hands watching Nora. She was watching exactly what she was doing. It was unbelievable.”
The great apes are native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia but are classed as “critically endangered”, partly due to poaching and deforestation.
The team also showed the orangutan – a species that is critically endangered – videos of other orangutans feeding their babies to try to help her learn.
The efforts made a difference, the zoo said, as Mujur showed “good maternal care” after giving birth to the male infant on 31 July.
But to their disappointment, she still was “not putting him in the right position for feeding”.
Normally they are not supposed to intervene at this stage, in order to let nature take its course.
But the new baby is regarded as particularly important due to the genetic profile he inherited from his father Sibu, an orangutan patriarch who died in February.
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So they took the “difficult decision” to separate the infant from Mujur.
For now, they are bottle feeding him, before he is transferred to specialist care at Monkey World in Dorset.