When An Orangutan Couldn't Nurse Her Baby, A Breastfeeding Zookeeper Showed Her How

When Zoe the orangutan welcomed her first baby in the Metro Richmond Zoo in Virginia, she wasn’t able to breastfeed. Zookeepers had to step in to help by hand-feeding her baby instead. So when Zoe was getting ready to welcome her second baby, the zoo came up with a series of steps to help bring out that maternal instinct in the orangutan. They showed her examples of how to carry, clean, and generally care for her baby. But when her little one was born and she still wasn’t able to grasp how to feed new baby, they brought in a zookeeper who was breastfeeding her own baby to show her how it’s done.

Zookeeper Whitlee Turner was asked by the Metro Richmond Zoo to bring in her own baby boy to be breastfeed in front of Zoe, and she generously agreed. In a video shared by the zoo, Turner is seen sitting outside of Zoe’s enclosure, crosslegged on the floor as she breastfeeds her son Caleb. And Zoe is watching her so closely, seemingly trying to learn from a fellow mom, that it will bring tears to your eyes.

“With my bra down, I was very exaggerated when I put him on so that she could see that the baby goes here,” Turner explained in the video. “The whole time I was talking to her and pointing at her, pointing at the baby, pointing at her breasts. And when Caleb was latched I was showing it to her, making sure that she saw the important part. The whole time she just kept watching me curiously.”

The good news is that it worked. While Zoe didn’t immediately nurse her baby boy, she did eventually. Perhaps aided not only by Turner’s generous mom-to-mon instruction, but also by the videos the zookeepers had been playing for her before she gave birth of a mother orangutan caring for her baby. One zookeeper even modeled how to carry a baby orangutan by carrying a toy on her chest and walking around to show Zoe how it was done. Sadly, Zoe’s own mother died when she was nine months old, leaving her without a maternal role model to show her how things are done.

Fortunately, she has help from zookeepers to show her the way. And a fellow breastfeeding mom who doesn’t mind sharing her own experience. Perhaps because she understands how difficult breastfeeding can be. “I had a really hard time in the beginning as a new mom with my breastfeeding journey,” Turner explained in the video. “I required a lot of guidance and help before we really figured it out. Whether it was an orangutan or a human, I just want to be able to help any new mom.”