A baby orangutan in a veterinary setting with medical supplies, light blue scrubs, and clean tiled flooring. 1:39
International Animal Rescue channel icon International Animal RescueOriginal creator 617K views Save

Baby orangutan found in a box pulls through

Baby orangutan Gito was found in a cardboard box, where he had been living on condensed milk. The people keeping him didn't know what a baby orangutan needs. more

The box was where he stayed until he was found, and by then the damage showed. He was badly dehydrated. Most of his hair had fallen out, and his skin was diseased.

The nearest help was International Animal Rescue's orangutan center in Borneo, nine hours away. His rescuers drove him there as fast as they could. When he arrived, a team in masks and gloves went straight to work.

Medical staff in masks and gloves lean over Gito, a small orangutan lying on a white surface. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
After a nine-hour drive, the team in Borneo starts Gito's emergency care.

The first job was a drip, to get fluids back into him, and then medication. Condensed milk is no food for a baby orangutan, and he had been living on almost nothing else. It had left him with very little to fight with.

He is tiny, small enough that the whole of him fits in a pair of gloved hands, and the keepers move him as if he might break. The words people reach for when they see him are the obvious ones. Poor baby. So fragile.

A baby orangutan in a veterinary setting with medical supplies, light blue scrubs, and clean tiled flooring. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Baby orangutan Gito was found in a cardboard box, where he had been living on condensed milk.

What follows is weeks of the same patient routine. He's lifted in gloved hands, fed, given his medicine and settled again, over and over, by people who do this for a living. His skin is slow to heal and his hair is slower to return. Nobody hurries him.

A small orangutan lies on a person's gloved hands in a medical room, with equipment nearby. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Gito rests in a keeper's gloved hands during his care at the center.

Two months in, the difference is plain. His health has greatly improved, and his skin, though still recovering, looks much smoother. He has also grown two front teeth.

Carers in gloves and masks tend to a small orangutan lying on a surface indoors. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Two months into his care, Gito is stronger and has grown two front teeth.

He has a friend now, too. Asoka goes to the Orangutan Preschool at the center, and the two of them have graduated together and moved up to Baby School. For a baby who started out in a cardboard box, that's a fine first report card.

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