My mummy didn’t want me ... I’m so glad I found you-oo-oo!
An adorable orang-utan baby rejected by her mother. A lone female without a cheeky monkey of her own. And a happy ending in a British zoo
EACH night, RoRo the orangutan spends half an hour before bedtime building a nest out of blankets and branches in a hammock so she and her toddler Mimi can snuggle up in each other’s arms to sleep.
During the day in the nursery at their ape rescue centre, if Mimi, nearly two, so much as has a tuft of her bright orange fur tugged too hard by a playmate, RoRo is there to break up the spat and give her a hug.
Yet this touching relationship is all the more remarkable because RoRo is not the ape’s natural mother.
When she was born at Moscow Zoo in August 2015, Mimi was rejected by her birth mother, Lichana, because as an ape born and bred in captivity, she had never learned the parenting skills she needed.
Primate expert Dr Alison Cronin, director of Monkey World, Dorset, which has Europe’s only creche for orphaned orang-utans, says: ‘They have the longest childhoods of any animal except humans and are dependent on their mothers until about age seven.
‘Like so many orang-utans abandoned by their mothers, when Mimi’s didn’t pick her up after birth, she had to be taken away for her own safety and fed and raised by her human keepers.
‘The keepers would carry her to a window where she would see the rest of the orang-utans. But unless another female could be found to look after her, there was a risk that Mimi would abandon any baby she would go on to have in adulthood.’
THANKFULLY,
Dr Cronin had an ape in Dorset whom she thought would be the perfect carer — 29- year- old RoRo. Her name means ‘tender’ in Chinese.
Despite seeing her own mother killed by poachers before she was sold as a pet and rescued aged seven, Dr Cronin felt RoRo’s natural love for babies would make her the ideal replacement mummy: ‘RoRo is like a nursery teacher, keeping an eye on the little ones.’
Her instincts proved right. As soon as they met, RoRo seemed to know what to do to make the insecure orphan feel at home.
Dr Cronin says: ‘The day after Mimi arrived from Moscow in May, we opened the door to her new bedroom to let RoRo in.
‘ The babies are easily intimidated. RoRo seemed to instinctively know that if she grabbed hold of her, that would be construed as pushy. Instead, she came in and made eye contact with Mimi.
‘She took one of the blankets used as bedding and climbed into one of the hammocks with it. RoRo put it over her head as if to play hide-and-seek.
‘for Mimi, who hadn’t been with her own kind since she was tiny, it was as if a light was switched on. She left the toy hedgehog she had been clutching for security, followed RoRo onto the hammock and started to play.
‘now she follows her around like a mini-me. If Mimi even squeaks, RoRo is there to help. At night, they curl up in their nest like a big ball of orange fur.’
finding a foster mum to give the love she needed was the end of Mimi’s heart-breaking journey. Orang-utan mothers raise their children alone in the rainforest canopy in Indonesia or Malaysia, as males leave after mating.
The infants cling onto their mother’s fur, never letting go for the first 18 months. The mothers teach them how to climb, make nests in tree branches and gather fruit and plants for food.
But their habitat has been threatened by the expansion of palm oil plantations. The vegetable oil is used for everything from ice-cream to cosmetics.
They also face poachers, who often sell the babies illegally as pets on the black market after
shootings the adult females. EvenE when they are rescued, theth heartbreak does not end.
Dr Cronin says: ‘ If female orang-utanso are hand-reared by humans, they often grow up not being good parents as they don’t have the right role models.’
So it was for Mimi. ‘The morningin after Mimi’s mother gave birth, the keeper found her on the floor, flailing her limbs and cryingc out. Her mother was nowheren near.’
Two attempts to help Lichana bond with Mimi failed and the keepers had to care for her.
Once it was clear her mother wouldw not take her back, Moscow Zoo asked Dr Cronin if she could take her. ‘It took a lot of time, due to the paperwork and permissions we needed to get Mimi brought to the UK,’ she says.
‘By the time she was 18 months old, she had developed a bit of an attitude because she had been treated like a little princess.
‘She had no competition. The keepersk gave her soft toys. As farfa as she was concerned, everythinge was about her.’
It meant that in the run-up to bringing Mimi to Britain, the team had to win her over so she wouldw stay in her carry-on box on the four- hour flight. Dr Cronin said: ‘Her behaviour was like that of a human toddler.
‘ Mimi was happy to take things from us, like a bottle. But if we touched her toys, she’d be like: “How dare you?” and would rush at us with her teeth showing.
‘Even at 18 months, she had teeth like a pony, so if you got a bite, you’d know about it. While she may have been only 8kg, she was strong. She was beautiful, but you couldn’t call her sweet.’
After four days of getting to know Dr Cronin, Mimi was lured into a travel box with her favourite treat, raisins. She slept so peacefully in her free seat provided by British Airways that other passengers had no idea she was there.
Now Mimi has a ready-made family at Monkey World, which has 15 orang-utans, the largest group outside Asia.
Dr Cronin says: ‘After she met RoRo, Mimi didn’t go back to the ground to hang out with the humans as she did before. In the wild, they would barely come to the ground at all.
‘Everything seemed to fit into place. She was out of sorts before and a bit grumpy. But now she has a family, life seems to make sense for her.’ Now Mimi is strong enough to climb the ropes, she has joined the other orphans in the creche. It is fitted with hammocks, climbing frames and fireman’s hoses to encourage the toddlers to climb, as they would in the rainforest.
ONE
of her playmates is Rieke, a two-yearold female who was rejected by her own mother at Zoo Berlin for the same reasons as Mimi. Another is Bula Mata, a male of the same age, who arrived after his mother died of unknown causes at Budapest Zoo.
The toddlers wrestle, climb on each other and play with toys, such as milk cartons filled with Marmite or Cheerios. To keep their brains active, they have to use their ingenuity to get the goodies out with sticks or their tongues.
But as happy as the toddlers are, the outlook for orang-utans is uncertain, says Dr Cronin. Estimates indicate there may be less than 50,000 Bornean orang-utans on the island of Borneo, the only place they are found in the wild.
There are fewer Sumatran orang-utans on the island of Sumatra — around 15,000. And the fact that rescue centres on both islands are overflowing with orphans means apes raised in the UK are unlikely to get the chance to go back to the wild.
Dr Cronin says: ‘Humans have cut down rainforests so there is nowhere left for them to go. Orang-utans live in a unique social system.
‘ The males need large territories, or they will fight. So it’s not possible to squeeze them into smaller patches of forest.
‘We can find the best ways for them to live with each other closely, as in the wild, and break the circle of abandonment that raising them in captivity can create.’
Indeed, one of the rescue centre’s other orphans, Joly, a 12year- old female who was adopted by RoRo, has gone to a zoo in Spain to start her own family.
Dr Cronin is hopeful that she has the parenting skills she needs, thanks to the fact that she was able to grow up with older female orang-utans in the creche: ‘We can bring Mimi up safely so she can live a more normal life with her kind. Here, we give orphaned orang-utans a family back.’