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Posted: 6:28 AM- If the world's population of endangered Bornean orangutans is ever to recover, it's going to take a long time.
Orangutan mothers often go eight years or longer between offspring. In any given year in the United States, where there are 220 orangutans in captivity, only one or two babies are born. So few zookeepers have much experience in breeding, let alone encouraging the mother-baby bonds that are a hallmark of the ape's species survival plan.
That's why two zookeepers from Utah's Hogle Zoo are in Chicago, this week, to speak with ape caregivers from around the world. Their success in bringing together a baby orang, Acara, with her mother, Eve, is being called a model for future breeding efforts.
"It's extremely significant," said Carol Sodaro, one of the world's foremost experts on ape husbandry and care, who consulted with Hogle zookeepers Bobbi Gordon and Erin Jones about Acara's birth and rearing. "Not having Acara and Eve together would prevent Eve from getting the normal maternal skills she needs."
And that, Sodaro and other ape experts said, may have prevented Eve - who at 17 years old still has time to rear more babies - from being able to contribute further to the propagation of the species.
Though zookeepers have been encouraging what Sodaro calls "good maternal behavior" using techniques developed at Brookfield for 15 years, Acara's May 7, 2005 birth presented special challenges.
Not only did Eve not know how to be a mother, but after a rare Caesarean section delivery, she didn't even realize she was a mother. And for several months didn't seem to want to have anything to do with her daughter.
"We were really just hoping to get them to progress to a big sister-little sister kind of relationship," Gordon said. "It was so exciting to watch it progress to more of a mother-daughter relationship."
The nine-month effort included working with Eve to teach behaviors that, in the wild, would have been passed down from mother to daughter, or between peers. It also meant teaching Acara to learn to cling onto her mother but also helping her learn to be more independent in case the bond never formed.
Gordon and Jones said they're looking forward to presenting their findings - including lots of photos of Acara and Eve acting just as a mother-daughter pair of orangutans should - at the first-ever Orangutan Husbandry Workshop this week.
Sodaro, who is running the workshop which will be held at the Brookfield Zoo, said she's also looking forward to the presentation.
"I hope that it inspires others to know that they can take on these situations without thinking they aren't workable," she said. "I don't expect Eve to have any issues with caring for a future infant. Hopefully, they've broken the cycle of hand rearing."
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