New mothers give orangutan breastfeeding lessons

Breastfeeding is often one of the toughest parts of motherhood, and a little encouragement can go a long way.
So when Mujur the orangutan’s keepers at Dublin Zoo saw how she had struggled to have her offspring latch on, they hit upon a novel strategy: they recruited dozens of human mothers to provide her with “lactation tuition”.
Mujur, who is 19, had given birth twice before but had failed to bond sufficiently with her infants, who died in 2019 and 2022.
When she was discovered to be pregnant this year, Lizzie Reeves, a midwife who is part of the breastfeeding team at the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, assembled a team of 30 human mothers who took turns in teaching the ape.
“We had a maximum of four women a day. The chairs were all set up and there was safety glass between Mujur and the women who were breastfeeding,” Reeves told The Irish Times. “A lot of women said: ‘Look, an orangutan doesn’t wear a T-shirt.’ So they whipped off their T-shirts and their bras so Mujur could literally see everything.”
She added: “The first person to help us was my friend Nora and her baby, Elodi. Mujur gathered more bedding and sat up at the window with her head in her hands watching Nora. She was watching exactly what she was doing. It was unbelievable.”
Nora Murphy, a first-time mother from Rathfarnham in Dublin, said she had not hesitated when she heard the call for volunteers. It would, she reasoned, be a story to tell her daughter, who is now ten months old, when she is older.
“You find yourself rooting for her [Mujur],” she said. “You are going from being a mother yourself to trying to help a mother-to-be. You would be talking to her saying: ‘Look, this is what you are meant to do.’ She would stare at you, really looking at what you were doing.
“Breastfeeding worked for me but I know it is not always the case for other women. I felt like I was passing a torch on [to Mujur].”
The zoo said that Mujur “was extremely interested in watching the women feed their babies through the glass, even mirroring some of their actions”. She was also shown videos of other orangutans feeding their babies.
The lessons may have helped. After she gave birth to a male on July 31, Mujur showed “good maternal care towards the infant after the birth”, the zoo said.
“However, she was not allowing the baby the chance to feed as she was not keeping him in the right position. For the health of the infant, the difficult decision was made to separate them and begin bottle-feeding.”
Hand-rearing the baby orangutan until he can live independently is not possible at Dublin Zoo. Instead, the zoo intends to transfer him to Monkey World in Dorset, which has experience in raising infants rejected by their mothers. He will be cared for by the Dublin Zoo animal care team for another few weeks before moving to his new home.
The zoo said: “The whole team has already fallen hopelessly in love with him, and it will be difficult to say goodbye. However, we are confident that he is being sent to the best possible place for him to continue to develop and thrive.”
The idea to give Mujur breastfeeding lessons came from Emma Flynn, one of the zoo’s vets. The survival of the infant was seen as critical to preserve the genetics of the father, an orangutan called Sibu, who died in March.
The lessons, which went on for 14 weeks, might not have been a complete success, but Reeves believes they were worthwhile. “It definitely made a difference,” she told The Times. The human mothers could see Mujur mirroring their behaviour, and she thinks the ape learnt from them.
“She didn’t know how to look after a baby previously. But this time around, Mujur looked after her baby really well. She didn’t put it down. It was in her arms the whole time,” Reeves said.
“She was kissing it and cuddling it and cleaning it and minding it. She was an amazing mother in everything except that she didn’t feed the baby — but obviously that’s the most important thing.”
If the need arose again, Reeves is confident that she would find volunteers. “When I first asked friends, colleagues and a local breastfeeding group, if any women would be interested, my phone did not stop that whole afternoon,” she said.
“I could have had 50 women in there, breastfeeding. The interest was so great. It was women supporting women, never mind the species.”