A heartwarming story unfolded in Dublin Zoo when 30 breastfeeding mothers came to teach Mujur, a 19-year-old female Orangutan, how to feed her infant, a baby male whose father is Sibu, the establishment’s beloved primate patriarch who sadly passed away in February 2024.
With a little bit over 100,000 individuals in existence, the Bornean orangutan is a critically endangered species, according to the WWF. Their birthrate is also notoriously low among primates, with females giving birth to only one baby every seven to nine years, making the survival of every infant even more critical.
Mujur previously gave birth to two babies in 2019 and 2022, but she did not sufficiently bond with either of them, resulting in their passing. As soon as she became pregnant again, Dublin Zoo’s staff knew that conventional methods wouldn’t cut it, so they decided to stage maternal workshops with human mothers.
