“Ape”ril Announcement: Baby Orangutan!

Apr

Posted by Hollie in African Forest,Zoo Births

On March 2 Houston Zoo Primate staff were thrilled to discover that orangutan Kelly had given birth overnight. The female infant is the third orangutan born at the zoo and is the sister of 7 year old Solaris and daughter of Doc. Unfortunately Kelly abandoned her within the first 24 hours and the primate staff was forced to intervene. We spent the following days attempting to give the baby back to Kelly with no success.

welcome to the world, kiddo!

Our goal for every primate at the zoo is have their parents raise them whenever possible, but we do intervene if we feel the infant’s health is at risk and that was the case with Kelly and her infant. Fortunately both of them are healthy and we hope to introduce the infant back to Kelly or to Cheyenne, our proven surrogate mom, once she is old enough. In the meantime, we have a big job to do.

Infant orangutans cling to their mothers all the time their first few months of life. In order to simulate this for the infant, caregivers carry her 24 hours a day. She spends her days in the orangutan building at Wortham World of Primates, where she can see all of the orangs and they can all see her. She also requires a bottle of human formula every 2-3 hours day and night so this is literally a full time job. It can be tempting to treat a baby orangutan like a baby human, but our goal is to get her back with orangs, so its critical to make sure she grows up knowing how to be an orangutan.

While we are disappointed that Kelly is not taking care of the infant, we are very lucky to have a team of keepers, supervisors and volunteers that have a great deal of experience caring for baby orangutans. Some of you may recall the first orangutan born here in 1997, Luna, who also had to be raised by keepers. However, she was later introduced to Cheyenne, and since then Cheyenne has adopted two additional orangutans from another zoo, Elok and Indah (Luna and Elok now reside at other zoos). The infant needs to gain a bit of independence before she’s ready to join Cheyenne or go back to Kelly, however, so our team is focused on making sure she is happy, healthy and growing.

Because all this work goes on behind the scenes, you won’t see the infant when you visit the zoo but we will be posting regular updates here on the blog. We’ve also got some additional information on our website, along with a Q&A of frequently asked questions. And you may have noticed she doesn’t have a name. We’re looking for help to pick one, so please help us out with our naming contest!

The Official Houston Zoo Blog