Orangutan mothers skip lunch to arrange jungle playdates for their young

If we’ve learned anything from Mowgli, it’s that growing up in the rainforest is brutally difficult. The same applies to orangutans, except their mothers can’t hire a bear and a panther to help. They do the work themselves.Picture this: a mother in the dense rainforest, navigating thick vegetation for days on end, deliberately steering her infant towards other young orangutans so they can play together. Except the mothers do not have phones or apps to coordinate their schedules. They didn’t pack snacks in a designer nappy bag. Just careful planning, travel, and pure sacrifice. Because this isn’t a scene from the world of affluent Manhattan parenting. It’s the reality of orangutan mothers in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. This isn’t a scene from a comic book either, but what scientists have recently found.