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Mama orangutan's tender moments with her 3-month-old baby melt everyone's hearts

Such a good mama.

Toronto Zoo/YouTube

Mama Sekali takes good care of her 3-month old.

There's nothing like the magic of new motherhood, when you find yourself spending hours marveling at the incredible being you helped create and gazing at their impossibly tiny and adorable features. It's sweet when humans do it, but seeing animals have those kinds of tender moments with their babies is so endearing.

Sekali, a Sumatran orangutan who lives at the Toronto Zoo, gave birth to a baby in April 2022. In a video shared by the zoo, the baby gets some "tummy time" while Sekali gently strokes and cuddles him. "Sekali continues to take excellent care of her little one, and he appears to be more alert and mobile," the zoo shared. "Keepers are seeing the baby standing up while holding onto mom and sitting up on his own now, so he is growing stronger each day."

The little guy is cute cute cute, but Sekali picking up his foot and "kissing" it is the sweetest darn thing ever.

Orangutan Tummy Time

- YouTubeyoutu.be

People gushed over the video on the zoo's Facebook page.

"LOOKS LIKE ALL MOMMA'S COUNTING THOSE LITTLE TOES AND FINGERS.... SHE APPEARS TO BE SUCH A TENDER MOM!! 🙂❤ I LOVE THIS!!!! 🙂" wrote one commenter.

"Clearly his Mom just adores him so much," wrote another. "She is such a good Mom.........he's so sweet and bright-eyed .....a happy and content little guy."

"I’m going to get in trouble for saying this, but, that little one is cuter than a lot of babies!!!! Just look how gentle she is with baby!!!" shared another.

A few months later in August 2022, the Toronto Zoo announced in a press release that the baby orangutan had been christened "Wali," which means "guardian" in Indonesian. Dolf Dejong, CEO of the Toronto Zoo, noted that the name was chosen from a batch of suggestions from the Wildlife Care keepers. Though there were many great suggestions, one stood out as the "clear winner," said DeJong. According to the Zoo's press release, the name felt "fitting since Sumatran Orangutans are the guardians of the rainforests."

While the Sumatran orangutans are seen as guardians, the sad truth is that the species is in trouble.

In 2017, Sumatran orangutans were moved from the International Union for Conservation and Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species' "endangered" category to "critically endangered," with their habitat in the wild threatened by deforestation, primarily due to palm oil plantations replacing rainforests. According to the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme in 2022, there were only around 14,000 orangutans left in the wild. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), that number has dipped even lower as of 2025.

rainforest, nature, environment, Sumatran orangutans, guardiansAccording to the Toronto Zoo, "countless [rainforest] plants and animals depend on the critically endangered orangutans for survival."Image via Canva

Orangutan breeding in captivity is not without its controversy, however. The purpose of captive breeding programs like the Orangutan Species Survival Plan is not to release the animals into the wild, but rather to maintain genetic diversity, enable research, and educate the public about these magnificent creatures. Zoos have come a long way in recent decades, creating habitats that look and feel much less like cages and more like the wild, and studies have shown that zoos have a positive impact on people's interest in conservation. Orangutans in human care, like Sekali, may help motivate more people to care about what's happening to the species in their home habitats.

“We are incredibly excited to welcome this new addition to the Toronto Zoo family,” said DeJong. “This orangutan baby is an important contribution to a genetically healthy Sumatran orangutan population in human care. Meanwhile, Sumatran orangutans are under increasing pressure in the wild due to habitat loss and the palm oil crisis, which we are working with partners to address. We are proud to play an important role in the conservation of this amazing species.”

Today, Wali is thriving with mama Sekali and dad Budi. A compilation of his "adorable antics" was shared on YouTube in early January, showing the public what Wali has been up to the last few years. Watch:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

If you'd like to learn more about orangutan conservation and how to help, visit the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme or check out the Toronto Zoo Wildlife Conservancy.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Orangutans are pretty much the best. And, guess what, there’s a whole new species.

Orangutans are pretty amazing animals. They’re one of the few great apes alive today and among humankind's closest cousins. But we may not have realized just how amazing they are until now.

The discovery started with a scene out of something like "CSI." Raya, an older adult male orangutan, had been killed by humans back in 2013. Researchers knew Raya had come from an unusual population of orangutans and had preserved his skeleton for study. And as they pored over the remains, a couple of weird things started to stick out.

"We were surprised that the skull was quite different in some characteristics from anything we had seen before," said Matt Nowak, an anthropologist. The teeth looked different too.

[rebelmouse-image 19529925 dam="1" original_size="750x499" caption="Hey there, big fella. Photo by Maxime Aliaga/University of Zurich." expand=1]Hey there, big fella. Photo by Maxime Aliaga/University of Zurich.

Before he became an evolutionary puzzle, Raya had come from a rugged, mountainous, and thickly forested area known as Batang Toru.

Batang Toru is far south of anywhere else orangutans are found in Sumatra. The apes that live there are cut off from any other population of their kind. Isolated populations often evolve in unique and interesting ways, which hinted to scientists that the Batang Toru apes were special.

Armed with Raya's unique skull and teeth, the Indonesian scientists reached out to colleagues who'd done a previous genetic study.

"It was then that all the pieces fell in place," Nowak says.

The Batang Toru apes weren't just special. They were a unique species.

In honor of the Malaysian district the apes were found in, the new species has been given the scientific name Pongo tapanuliensis.

Before this, we’d known of two orangutan species. One on the island of Sumatra and one in Borneo, with Sumatran orangutans having thinner faces, longer beards, and a tendency to use more tools. But we now know there aren't two orangutan species out there — there are three.

The genetic analysis also showed that the Batang Toru apes weren't just a new species but may also represent an ancient genetic lineage that stretches back to the first orangutans to arrive on Sumatra eons ago.

[rebelmouse-image 19529926 dam="1" original_size="750x499" caption="The new species of ape. Photo by Tim Laman/University of Zurich." expand=1]The new species of ape. Photo by Tim Laman/University of Zurich.

But even as the world gets to know this new species of great ape, its future is already uncertain.

The entire species might only include about 800 living animals, according to a survey. In fact, primates all around the world are facing increasingly tough odds — as many as three-quarters of all primate species are in decline.

The good news is that we already know several ways to help out this new species. Like all orangutans, the Batang Toru apes need large, healthy forests to survive, which means protecting their habitat from deforestation is critical. The World Wildlife Fund, TRAFFIC, and International Animal Rescue also help governments crackdown on the illegal wildlife trade, which can affect orangutans. They even rescue infants that were sold as pets.

It's hard to look into a great ape's eyes and not see a little of ourselves reflected back at us.

The discovery of a whole new species of human cousin should be an incredible moment of joy. But it should also a rallying cry for better, stronger conservation efforts to make sure these animals stay around a long, long time.

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This epic zoo escape story shows how fantastically smart orangutans can be.

Fu Manchu was on the loose.

Adult male orangutans grow big jowls, like this gentleman from a German zoo. Photo by Oliver Lang/AFP/Getty Images.

Fu was an adult male orangutan who lived in the Omaha Zoo way back in the 1960s.

Though he was named after the villainous mastermind in Sax Rohmer's series of novels, Fu was anything but a villain. He was gentle and easy-going, the Omaha Zoo said in a flashback Facebook post.

"Fu, at a young age, would climb inside of the keeper's parkas as they were wearing them, slide his arms into the sleeves and play with the keepers," they wrote. "[Fu] even saved a curator who had slipped on a wet floor inside the exhibit."

One day, though, Fu caused quite a commotion by escaping from his enclosure.

When zookeepers came near his enclosure, they were shocked to find Fu sitting in a tree. Orangutans love to climb trees, yes, but the tree was outside his enclosure, over near the elephant barn. And he hadn't just escaped, he also brought his companion and three children along with him!

In the wild, orangutans often build bed-like nests in trees. Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images.

The keepers were able to guide Fu back to his enclosure, where they found an open, unlocked maintenance door. Head keeper Jerry Stones, assuming it was the fault of one of the keepers, gave his team a tongue-lashing.

Stones was willing to let the incident go. But then it happened again.

Just a few days later, the Fu Manchu family was spotted basking in the sun on a nearby rooftop outside the enclosure. The keepers managed, again, to get Fu back into his home. But this time, Stones was furious.

"I was getting ready to fire someone," he told Time magazine.

But a few days later, before anyone lost their job, one of Stones' staff noticed something: Fu Manchu was behaving weirdly.

It turned out that Fu had MacGuyver'd his own escape device.

As the staff watched, Fu Manchu ambled over to the dry moat in his enclosure that contained the maintenance door and climbed down some air vents to get to the bottom. Then, as they all watched, he proceeded to jimmy the door's latch with what looked like a homemade lock pick!

Keepers later found that the lock pick was a long piece of wire Fu had managed to find somewhere and bend into shape. Using it, he could unlatch the maintenance door from the outside.

What's more, the reason that nobody had been able to find it before was that Fu kept this lock pick a secret. He'd do it by hiding it in between his bottom lip and his gums between escape attempts, only pulling it out when the time was ripe.

Orangutans are tool masters, and Fu Manchu isn't the only orangutan who's shocked us with their smarts.

Probing for goodies is only one of the many clever things we've seen orangutans do. Photo by Colin Knowles/Flickr.

Another big male, Ken Allen, lived at the San Diego Zoo in 1985 and kept finding new ways to scale the walls. The zoo ultimately had to hire a team of rock climbers to climb-proof his enclosure. He even inspired a song, "The Ballad of Ken Allen."

Orangutans in the wild, meanwhile, have been seen using leaves as gloves, napkins, or megaphones. They build nests to sleep in every night. They've even been seen spearfishing.

For his efforts, Fu Manchu earned an honorary membership in the American Association of Locksmiths, according to The Seattle Times.

Fu passed away in 1992 and was survived by 20 children and 15 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The zoo still has orangutans today, although none have entered the history books quite like Fu and his ridiculous, amazing escape attempts.

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