<<While the intention is so that they will "bond with" their keepers (and so, I assume, be safer to work with when they are large, toothy animals), the article also talked about how fast they are growing "on a diet of about 250 ml of milk a day", milk meaning, of course, an artificial milk. >> And, the problem with an animal "bonding with" their keepers is, they are more likely to kill the keeper later on, or be involved in some other tragedy. In my previous life, I was a mammal keeper, and the most dangerous animals we had were always the hand-reared ones. Basically, they bond with a human, believe they look like a human, and when they are placed with a cage full of "things" that look like monkeys, tigers, bears, whatever, they are certain they've been placed wrongly. They are humans after all, what are they doing with animals? They become aggressive, probably because they feel they are misunderstood, and many of these animals are much larger (and have sharper teeth) than the people taking care of them. The public really enjoy seeing abandoned animals being fed bottles, they like feeding the bottles, and nobody seems to really understand the consequences of an inferior diet, as well as the danger of humanizing the creature. I thought it was interesting that the women keepers who later became mothers were more likely to breastfeed, and continued breastfeeding for longer periods of time than the "average American." Or at least it was like that at the facilities I worked. Best wishes Sam Doak who retired to rear her own 4 primates... *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html Mail all commands to [log in to unmask] To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or [log in to unmask]) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet or ([log in to unmask]) To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]