A safari park in Indonesia’s East Java has welcomed a very
special new arrival. A baby orangutan was born at the park on Valentine’s Day.
The birth is extra special because the male baby is a Borneo orangutan, an
endangered species.
Staff has been carefully managing a breeding programme
that has seen the number of orangutans at the park reach 25. Excited zookeepers
couldn’t get near the baby for the first few days because the mother Dina was
very protective of her new bundle of joy. But now, they’ve had the chance
to get close to him and have named him Dana.
Park vet Ayu said everything was going well with both mother
and baby.
“This birth is the third for Dina. She’s used to taking care
of her own babies. Dana was born naturally in mid-February, as was estimated by
the medical team, and he’s been breast-fed normally.”
Dubbed as the last of Asia’s great apes, orangutans
once roamed the region, but the World Wildlife Fund now
estimates their dwindling numbers are between 45,000 and 69,000.
Difficult words: breeding (reproduction), bundle
of joy (baby), dub (label), roam (lived all over),World
Wildlife Fund (an organization that helps animals), dwindling (becoming
smaller).