How do you determine how many months or years animal mothers nurse their babies? If you’re not in a rush and can observe this dynamic, you could supposedly stick around to see when the baby, mother, or both decide that they’re done. However, that could take years. A team of researchers investigating breastfeeding in orangutans recently opted for a different, perhaps surprising strategy—searching for particular proteins in poop. 

In a preliminary study published in the journal Communications Biology, researchers searched for milk‑specific proteins in the feces of wild Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) living in the Danum Valley Conservation Area, in the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. These proteins prove that he or she is continuing to drink breast milk.The practice of recognizing particular proteins in feces is called fecal proteomics and it can help scientists better understand what animals are consuming.

“Orangutans have a slow life history with one of the longest interbirth intervals and the lowest reported infant mortality rates among primates or even mammals,” the team wrote in the study. “Breastfeeding is a key factor in their life history because it possibly promotes offspring health and increases maternal interbirth intervals.”

The team gathered fecal samples for over two and a half years, and found milk‑specific proteins in all the 20 samples from orangutans less than six and a half years old. This indicates that the young great apes were continuing to breastfeed until they were at least that age. 

According to the team, these results are “consistent with the behavioral evidence as having one of the longest breastfeeding periods in mammals.”

What’s more, “milk intake was significantly correlated with higher levels of biological defense and probiotic bacterial proteins.”

In other words, the more milk a young orangutan drinks, the more probiotic intestinal bacteria it has and the sturdier its biological protections are. Such consistent and enduring breastfeeding probably helps the very high survival of orangutan babies and plays a role in their slow reproductive approach. 

Unfortunately, Bornean orangutans are critically endangered, and the paper highlights why their populations don’t rebound quickly after a decrease. Safeguarding what’s left of their rainforest habitats is crucial. 

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On April 21, a baby horse was born at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo in New York City. But it wasn’t just any foal that came into the world—this newest resident of the Big Apple is a Przewalski’s horse (Equus ferus przewalskii), an endangered species that has been pulled back from the brink of extinction. 

Przewalski’s horses look more like a mule than your average horse. For starters, their mane sticks up straight into the air and they don’t have a forelock (horse bangs, basically). Przewalski’s horses are also short, light brown, and—excuse the necessary slang—exceptionally chonky. They also have a really thick neck. 

They are also referred to as the Mongolian wild horse, and they are the only truly wild horse species left, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Though the species used to exist across Asia and Europe, their numbers plummeted so much that at one point they were deemed Extinct in the Wild. 

“The Bronx Zoo has played a pivotal role in the conservation of Przewalski’s horse,” the Bronx Zoo wrote in a statement announcing the birth. “Through breeding programs aimed at maintaining a genetically diverse population of the species and through reintroduction efforts, zoo-bred Przewalski’s horses were successfully returned to their native grasslands in China in 1989 and in Mongolia beginning in 1992.”

Przewalski’s horses now live in Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan, as well as in zoos. Rather shockingly, the entire extant population (which researchers estimate is less than 2,000 individuals) descends from only 12 horses. 

In Mongolia, the Wildlife Conservation Society supports Protected Areas with wild horses. As for the Bronx Zoo, the foal is part of a herd. Visitors can see it from the Wild Asia Monorail, where the adorable baby is sure to develop a colt (young male horse) following. 

The post Rare Przewalski’s horse born in New York appeared first on Popular Science.

Previously, we reported on the birth of a baby western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo on May 18. His mother Jamani was one of two pregnant western lowland gorillas bearing children from the same father, a silverback gorilla named Nadaya. Since Olympia was due around the same time, we spent the long weekend waiting anxiously for news. 

The Woodland Park Zoo’s announcement arrived last night. The baby was born on May 24—five dates past the due date. To bring her baby into the world, the medical team that usually works on humans performed an emergency C-section on Olympia. The procedure is incredibly rare for gorillas, with less than a dozen recorded gorilla C-sections.

“Over the weekend, the decision to proceed with emergency delivery was due to low fluid and intermittent low baby heart rate (found by us with the Butterfly) and critical behavioral information from the keepers team that suggested delayed/paused labor, with confirmation of ruptured membranes (bag of water) by the Team Gorilla OB physicians,” Sachita Shah, emergency physician and VP of Global Health at medical equipment manufacturer Butterfly Network, tells Popular Science. In a previous interview, Shah said that ultrasounds of gorilla fetuses look very similar to ultrasounds of human fetuses. 

Butterfly is an all-in-one ultrasound probe that the gorilla care team has been using to monitor the pregnancies. Once the baby came out, “I used The Butterfly throughout the neonatal resuscitation to keep a close eye on the baby’s heart rate as our vital sign so we were able to ensure the safe point to transition from neonatal resuscitation to post natal care,” Shah adds. 

Whether for humans or gorillas, a C-section is a major operation, and Olympia rested without the baby for the first night after the birth. But the newborn wasn’t far away—a gorilla keeper and veterinary technician took care of the baby in a den next to Olympia’s, so she was able to see, hear, and smell it. Both Olympia and the baby boy are now back with their gorilla troop, though Jamani is taking care of Olympia’s newborn as well as her own baby boy. 

“So far Olympia’s baby is doing well and maintaining a healthy body temperature. While Olympia recovers from the C-section, our plan is to allow Jamani to continue caring for Olympia’s son while also caring for her own son as long as both infants remain healthy, which is our priority,” Martin Ramirez, Curator of Mammalogy at Woodland Park Zoo, explained in a blog post. “Once Olympia shows signs of being ready for her baby, we’ll move forward with plans to reunite them.”

It remains to be seen what the mother-son duo will look like. However, western lowland gorillas are critically endangered, so the important thing is that both remain healthy.

The post Doctors perform rare emergency C-section on a gorilla appeared first on Popular Science.

When Sachita Shah sent her cardiologist brother an ultrasound of her patient’s heart, he was very confused. The heart was huge, and the left ventricle incredibly muscular. His confusion was warranted, as the ultrasound was not of a human heart. It belonged to another primate—a gorilla. Shah, emergency physician and VP of Global Health at medical equipment manufacturer Butterfly Network, tells Popular Science that if she had shown an ultrasound of a gorilla fetus to a radiologist, they would have assumed it was a human baby. 

Shah is on the gorilla care team currently looking after Jamani and Olympia, two western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) mothers at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington. Jamani gave birth on Monday May 18, and Olympia is expected to deliver her new baby imminently. Shah and her colleagues’s work involves conducting ultrasounds of Jamani and Olympia’s baby bump—though now probably just Olympia’s—to keep an eye on the baby’s growth and position. 

“We got a really pretty baby face,” Shah says, speaking of the ultrasounds. “We could see nose and lips and fetal breathing movements and heartbeat and drinking fluid, opening mouth and swallowing. For all intents and purposes, it was very much the same [as a human baby].” 

The endangered gorilla mothers were trained to take part in the exams and procedures conducted by the gorilla care team, and they could choose whether to participate or not. The gorillas put their bellies against the edge of the enclosure for the scan (and received snacks), where there is a small opening through which the care team can reach through with the ultrasound probe. 

As such, the zoo needed a small and portable imaging device. That’s where Butterfly Network and their all-in-one ultrasound probe came in. 

“When you think of an ultrasound, you might think of a big cart with lots of different probes—a different probe if you wanted to do a pregnancy scan, or a heart scan, or a pediatric scan might have a tiny probe,” Shah says. 

Instead, the Butterfly probe they use at Woodland Park Zoo is a handheld ultrasound that plugs into a smart phone. It is around as big as an electric shaver, and it functions with a number of different softwares for either veterinarian or human health use. Notably, an app allows the team to use it for different types of scans—from a pregnant gorilla to a child’s lungs—that would traditionally require distinct probes and machines. 

Shah and her colleagues also used the Butterfly ultrasound device to scan the heart of Nadaya, the silverback gorilla father of both babies. In fact, the heart ultrasound Shah sent to her brother belonged to Nadaya.  They used human software for that scan, even though their vet software is optimized for fur. Fortunately, Nadaya’s chest isn’t very furry. 

Shah, who has gone through a pregnancy herself, was most moved by working with the gorilla mothers. 

“We could tell the baby’s head had dropped and we thought, ‘oh man, she must be so uncomfortable.’ And she was waddling and walking a little differently. I was like, ‘oh, I remember that, girl.’ It was just amazing to remember that we’re all connected in that way,” she says. 

Western lowland gorillas are critically endangered, so babies are always excellent news.

UPDATE May 27 8:19 a.m EDT

On Sunday, May 24, at 1:44 p.m. PDT, Olympia’s baby was delivered by an emergency C-section performed by a medical team who typically works on humans. This 5.4-pund boy is the western lowland gorilla’s second baby.

The post Pregnant gorillas undergo ultrasounds and the results might look familiar appeared first on Popular Science.

Avian vampire flies (Philornis downsi) were not discovered in the Galápagos Islands for almost three decades after they were thought to have arrived from mainland Ecuador in the 1960s. Even then, the first were found by accident. Birgit Fessl, a landbird ecologist, was surveying for native species on the island of Santa Cruz in 1997 when she reached into the branches of a tree to take down the huge, domed nest of a woodpecker finch. Inside was a surprise. “We found one dying chick, another dead one which just looked sucked dry and 20 large maggots full of blood,” said Fessl, who now leads the Charles Darwin Foundation’s Landbird Conservation program. “I was stunned — the first dead baby in my hands. Then I realized it wasn’t an accident: It was everywhere,” she told Mongabay over a WhatsApp call. Across each of the Galapagos’ human-inhabited islands, vampire flies had already wrought havoc, killing some chicks in nests they infiltrated and leaving others maimed for life. “But it went unseen because people didn’t really know what to look for.” Around the world, more than 37,000 invasive species have been introduced to new environments. Many of these cause suffering, from vampire flies maiming finches to yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes) spraying acid at the eyes of shrikes (Laniidae) on Minami-Daitō Island, Japan, and Australian quolls (Dasyurus) bleeding from the nose after eating toxic cane toads (Rhinella marina). But none of these are measured by the current global standard for assessing the impact…This article was originally published on Mongabay