Baby orangutan has captivated his caretakers

He doesn't have a name yet, but he's among Como Zoo's newest and rarest arrivals: an orangutan delivered by Caesarean section.

The baby, born Dec. 13 at the University of Minnesota's Veterinary Medical Center, is the 14th orangutan born at the zoo since 1959, its first since 1999 and its only arrival by C-section.

Doctors from the U's veterinary college joined with zoo staff and a pair of obstetrician-gynecologists from University of Minnesota Children's Hospital to perform the emergency surgery last month.

After three days in intensive care and eight more under round-the-clock supervision from zookeepers, the baby was reunited with his mother -- a 20-year-old Sumatran orangutan named Markisa -- on Christmas Day. Both are doing well.

"We were able to give her a little gift. She went right to him," said Megan Elder, the zoo's lead orangutan trainer. "We couldn't have asked for a better introduction."

The baby, who weighed about 4 pounds and was 12 inches long when he arrived, will be introduced to the media on Thursday and will be on display this weekend.

The zoo will also let the public choose among three names for the new orangutan.

It is rare, although not unprecedented, for great apes to undergo C-sections. An orangutan was born after the surgery at Utah's Hogle Zoo in 2005. Busch Gardens in Tampa, Fla., used the procedure to deliver a gorilla in 2005 and an orangutan in 2003.

Because humans and orangutans share so many traits, zookeepers seek to involve ob/gyns with everything from ultrasounds to delivery.

"The parallels are definitely there," said Grace Doolittle, a lactation consultant at U of M Children's Hospital who offered advice on getting Markisa nursing after mother and baby were reunited.

For instance, she said, orangutan mothers can take some of the same medicines as humans and in similar doses.

Involving physicians has become especially important as the orangutan population dwindles.

Only 7,000 orangutans are left in the wild. Because of deforestation on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo, the arboreal apes could be extinct in the wild in 10 to 15 years, according to zoo officials. There are roughly 200 on display in American zoos.

Markisa is a valuable female in the North American orangutan population because she is at a prime birthing age and was reared by her mother instead of a human.

She arrived at Como in 1995 with a male, Jambu Aye, amid hopes that the two would become a breeding pair.

But she delivered a stillborn baby in 2005. Her mother, who is at the Oregon Zoo, also had a history of delivering stillborns.

Precautions taken

That put Como Zoo staff on the alert when they found out Markisa was pregnant in June. They contacted the U's College of Veterinary Medicine and consulted other zoos in developing a birth management plan.

When Markisa went into labor on Dec. 13 and didn't deliver a baby within the typical four-hour window, the situation became urgent.

Not only was the zoo worried that the baby might be dead, they needed to save Markisa.

Twenty staff members from the veterinary college and U of M Children's Hospital performed the surgery.

The baby stopped breathing five minutes after birth because of fluid in his lungs and was rushed to intensive care.

His mother was returned to the zoo before the sedation wore off.

The baby was breathing on his own after a night, which led to 11 days of constant attention from zoo staff wearing orange furry vests that allowed the orangutan to cling to them like he would to his own mother.

And the zoo's biggest concern -- that the mother would neglect or become aggressive toward the baby after separation -- was resolved on Christmas Day.

During the eight days before they were reunited, the zoo kept the baby near Markisa, giving her a blanket with his scent and allowing her to touch him through mesh fabric.

When they placed the crying baby on wool bedding in the corner of Markisa's holding area, she raced to him.

"It was heartbreaking to see him crying," Elder said. "But when she ran right to him, we couldn't have asked for anything better."

Neither could the staff who got to work on such a unique patient.

"If they called again, I'd be there in a heartbeat," said Dr. Mark Bergeron, a neonatal/perinatal medicine fellow at the hospital who helped care for the baby the day after he was born. "It's one of the most memorable things I've done."

Ben Goessling • 651-298-1546