Breastfeeding mom's touching encounter with an orangutan has people swooning—and debating

Gemma Copeland/Facebook

A breastfeeding mother's experience at Vienna's Schoenbrunn Zoo is touching people's hearts—but not without a fair amount of controversy.

Gemma Copeland shared her story on Facebook, which was then picked up by the Facebook page Boobie Babies. Photos show the mom breastfeeding her baby next to the window of the zoo's orangutan habitat, with a female orangutan sitting close to the glass, gazing at them.

"Today I got feeding support from the most unlikely of places, the most surreal moment of my life that had me in tears," Copeland wrote.

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There's a scientific (and adorable) reason why babies hiccup, according to a new study

Photo by Kelvin Octa from Pexels

Newborn babies don't seem to do much beyond eating and pooping and, of course, hiccupping. A lot. Parenting advice on how to cure a baby's hiccups runs the whole gamut. It's recommended parents try everything from nursing to stop feeding the baby so much, from giving the baby gripe water to letting the hiccups play their course. But when your baby hiccups too much, you shouldn't freak out. There's a good reason why.

A new study published in Clinical Neurophysiology found that hiccups play an important role in a baby's development. Researchers from the University College London found 217 babies for their study, but only looked at 13 newborns with persistent hiccups. Ten of those babies hiccupped when they were awake, and three hiccupped during their "wriggly" sleep. We have no idea how the scientists got any work done with all that cuteness lying around.

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The story behind this viral photo shows why mom-shaming needs to stop

It was just one tiny fraction of a moment, captured in time. And it didn't look good.

Back in 2016, a man in a Colorado airport took a photo of a mom browsing her cellphone, her young infant squirming on a blanket on the ground in front of her. His original post (which has since been removed) was uploaded to Facebook with the caption: "Albert Einstein said, 'I fear the day that technology will take on our humanity ... the world will be populated by a generation of idiots.'"

Sure, absent any context, background, or explanation, the photo seemed to show a mom so uninterested in her child she'd rather check Facebook than pick her up off the floor.

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Female orcas surrounded this grieving mom in a heartbreaking circle of solidarity.

Parents everywhere are empathizing with this orca mom grieving the loss of its newborn.

The orca's baby died about 30 minutes after it was born in Puget Sound, off the coast of Washington state, but the mother had a hard time letting go. For three days, whale researchers observed her carrying the calf's body, carefully balancing it on her head as she swam. Even through rough waters, when the baby slipped and started to fall, the grieving mama, known to researchers as J35, dived deep to lift it back up again.

“It is horrible. This is an animal that is a sentient being. It understands the social bonds that it has with the rest...

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