Reunited, And It Feels So Good

There was a time - no so long ago, really - when the birth of any great ape in a zoo was such a rare, tremendous occurrence that the baby was deemed too delicate and precious to be entrusted to the mother.  Parenting, the thought process was, was too important to be left to amateurs, and baby gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees would be whisked away to be raised by human caretakers.  This had a regrettable tendency to result in behaviorally-incompetent animals that were not, in turn, suitably prepared to raise their own young when the time came, causing those offspring to be hand-reared as well.  And so the cycle went on...

Today, great apes, like almost all mammals, are left with their mothers whenever possible.  Sometimes, situations play out in such a way that the baby must be removed for one reason or another.  At Busch Gardens Tampa, for example, female orangutan Luna had to undergo a caesarian section, and her infant had to be removed while she recovered from the surgery.  The park was very open with the public about all of this (and yet still managed to see dozens of comments along the lines of, "But why isn't it with it's mom?"... read the caption, people!), as well as the fact that their end goal was getting the mother-child duo reunited as soon as possible.

"As soon as possible" turned out to be fairly fast, and mom and baby are once again together, and the bonding has begun. 

   

These stories don't always have an ending that's so happy - recently, a baby gorilla was born at Fort Worth Zoo, but the mother wasn't able to provide care.  A few decades ago, the Fort Worth keepers would have just raised the baby on their own, and I'm sure it would have been an absolute rockstar of an animal celebrity at the zoo.  Instead, the decision was made that the baby needed a proper social group more than Fort Worth needed a social media boost, and the baby was packed off to Cleveland, where a surrogate mother was found.

Every situation is different, so every outcome is different.  What's important is finding an outcome that provides the animal with the best chance of having a happy, healthy, properly-socialized life.