After a record-setting four-minute labor, a 19-year-old Bornean orangutan gave birth at the National Zoo on Monday night, the first birth at the zoo for the critically endangered species in a quarter-century.
The zoo said Tuesday that the baby, a male, was born at 8:52 p.m. The parents, Batang, and male, Kyle, 19, bred in January.
“It was shockingly quick,” Meredith Bastian, the zoo’s curator of primates, said of the labor.
And the birth is “a very big deal,” she said. “This is huge. … They’re critically endangered in the wild. The next step is extinction.”
Orangutans — the word means “person of the forest” in Indonesian — have suffered extensive loss of habitat as land is cleared for plantations, Bastian said.
Keepers are optimistic that the baby will thrive, the zoo said in a statement.
The Great Ape House, where the baby was born, will remain closed to allow Batang a quiet place to bond with her infant.
Animal-care staff members think that Batang had successfully conceived Feb. 2, based on a human pregnancy test.
The zoo now has seven orangutans. They can live into their late 50s. In the wild, their predators are humans, clouded leopards and pythons, Bastian said.
