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Date: | Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:06:03 -0500 |
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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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