And to refer to another species - several years ago, when I was in Walt 
Disney World, my family took one of the backstage tours through Animal 
Kingdom to learn how they care for the animals. We were very interested to 
learn that two of the elephants were pregnant. The staff was quite excited 
because apparently it is fairly rare for elephants in captivity to become 
pregnant, and the fact that they had showed they were feeling safe and 
settled in their "safari home." However, the two mothers-to-be were both 
from zoos, and had no experience at all with babies, so they were concerned 
that they wouldn't know how to nurse their babies. Apparently that is also a 
common problem with elephants in captivity and often the babies don't 
survive.

Their solution: they got videos of elephants giving birth and feeding their 
babies, with close-up shots of the babies feeding, and they showed them on 
huge screens in the elephant house every evening. They were not sure if it 
would work but they were hopeful; apparently research has shown that 
elephants can recognize elephants on videos so they hoped they could learn 
about feeding from this.

Apparently it worked - or maybe the elephants were just smarter than they 
thought - because first one, and then the second baby was born and both have 
flourished. We saw the two babies wrestling and playing together when we 
were there last year and they were SO cute. Early this year, a third baby 
was born.

The point is, I think, that mammals of many species need to learn about 
feeding, and human mothers growing up in a bottle-feeding culture shouldn't 
be surprised if it takes us a while to learn as well.

Teresa Pitman 

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