Dublin Zoo in Ireland asked breastfeeding mothers for help in teaching an orangutan mother how to feed her baby.
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When the team at Dublin Zoo discovered that an orangutan named Mujur was expecting a baby, they decided to ask breastfeeding women for help in teaching the new mother how to feed her baby.
This is not the first time 19-year-old Mujur has been pregnant, but in her previous two pregnancies in 2019 and 2022, she did not bond with the newborns, and the infants eventually died. This time, the zoo decided to enlist human mothers to show the orangutan how to breastfeed.
The ‘lessons’ started even before Mujur gave birth to a healthy male infant on July 31. Over the past few months, 30 mothers took turns breastfeeding their babies in front of the pregnant orangutan.
“Mujur was extremely interested in watching the women breastfeeding their babies through the glass, even mirroring some of their actions,” the zoo said in a statement.
Nora Murphy, one of the volunteer mothers, shared her experience with the Irish Times: “You find yourself rooting for Mujur,” “You’re going from being a mother to trying to help a future mother. You’re saying to her, ‘Look, this is what you need to do’.”
“She kept looking at us, really paying attention. She started imitating after a while, which was magical.”
According to the zoo, the efforts to teach Mujur to breastfeed were successful, and she demonstrated good maternal care with her baby after birth, but she still wasn’t placing the infant in the correct position, and the caregivers had to make the difficult decision to feed the baby with a bottle.
It’s not the first time a zoo has tried to teach an orangutan mother to breastfeed her baby. In 2023, Whitlee Turner, an employee of Metro Richmond Zoo in the US, helped new mother Zoe care for her baby by showing her how she breastfed her newborn, and in this case, the experience was a great success.
This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.