Monkey World was pleased to welcome infant orang-utan, Sibu Junior, to the rescue centre this week, from Dublin Zoo in Ireland.
On 19th October Alison collected Sibu Jr, a young 12-week-old male orang-utan from Dublin Zoo. His mother did not feed him despite the zoo making efforts to show the pregnant orang-utan, who had history of being unable to care for her babies, how to breastfeed youngsters.
Sibu Junior was born on July 31st and despite his mother clearly loving him, she did not possess the skills to position him so he could feed, so the difficult decision was taken to remove Sibu Junior to be hand reared, to save the youngster. The team at Dublin Zoo cared for Sibu Junior round the clock for the first couple months of his life, while arrangements were made to transfer him to Monkey World – Ape Rescue Centre.
Monkey World is home to the European specialist orang-utan crèche for orphaned and rejected infants, which aims to break cycle of abandonment and help female orang-utans rear their own young in future. Orang-utans have the longest childhood of any primate apart from humans, and as they are semi-solitary in the wild, they depend upon these early years to learn everything from their mother which they will need in adult life, including climbing, feeding and child-rearing. It appears when young orang-utans are unable to be mother reared, they do not learn the skills to enable them to look after their own children. For the little boys like Sibu Junior, growing up in the Orang-utan Nursery Crèche gives them the skills to live with women and children when they become fully mature males.
The nursery is currently home to four other young orang-utans born in zoos in Hungary, Germany and the UK, who were also unable to be reared by their own mothers. At Monkey World they are now cared for by the crèche foster mother Oshine, a Bornean orang-utan who was rescued from the illegal pet trade in South Africa in 2010.
Director of Monkey World, Dr Alison Cronin MBE, travelled to Dublin to meet the beautiful, but vulnerable infant, and bring him back to Monkey World. She was accompanied back to the Dorset sanctuary by a member of Sibu Junior’s care team from Dublin, to keep his transition as stress free as possible.
Alison said “It is really too bad that Sibu’s mother did not feed him, it was what everyone had hoped for. In the end the team at Dublin Zoo saved the baby’s life and cared for him around the clock while necessary health checks and paperwork were completed for the transfer of the infant to Monkey World. It is so important that orphan orang-utans grow up with others of their own kind. Monkey World specialises in the care of these very vulnerable infants and has specialist facilities to aid in their development and integration into the Nursery Crèche. At present Sibu is just over 3kg and is taking 90mls of formula at a time, throughout the day and night. He is not ready to join the others just yet but it won’t be long before he is able to sit up and move around on his own. Then he can start spending days in the nursery and get to know some of the others that live there. Sibu’s future in the nursery crèche is a long one as he will stay with us, growing up with other orang-utans for the next 10 years before having an adult group of his own someday.”
Including Sibu Junior, Monkey World has received 10 orphan orang-utans from seven different countries to date. The future is bright for this young orange man!
