Dr Heather Arens helped deliver the baby chimp
A video of a chimpanzee mother reuniting with her newborn baby will surely warm your heart. The heartwarming clip was posted by the Sedgwick County Zoo on social media. The newborn baby boy was born via a C-section on Tuesday.
The chimp was not breathing well on his own after the birth, so the hospital staff decided to keep it for two days. In the video, the mother, whose name is Mahale embrace her son after she saw her baby after two days of separation. The baby chimp was named Kucheza, which means 'play' in Swahili.
Along with the video, the caption read, "After almost 2 full days, Mahale and baby were reunited this morning! Mahale gave birth via C-section after her labour had stopped progressing. The baby wasn't getting enough oxygen on his own at birth so he had to stay in the hospital to receive treatment and care from the medical team until he was healthy enough to return to mom."
In another post, the zoo informed the social media followers that the baby and the mother are doing amazing. The post was captioned, "Just in from the keepers: Mahale and Baby are doing amazing and our boy now has a name! Kucheza (koo-CHAY-zuh) means "play" in Swahili. In this video, you can see a sweet moment between mom and son while he nurses."
Dr Heather Arens, the director of animal health at the zoo, helped deliver the baby along with the human medical doctors, reported Kwch.com. She told the portal that the difference between human and animal birthing is that doctors can't perform hands-on monitoring of the animals to find out what their contractions are doing. Still, she said Kucheza's delivery is the best outcome they could've asked for.
"The teamwork and the collaboration with human medical doctors and the collaboration with the community, I think that is something that not every zoo has. So fortunate to be a part of it here in Wichita," Dr Arens told the portal.
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