Tori, 15, gave birth on
Wednesday in the central Javanese city of Solo, Taru Jurug Zoo director Lilik
Kristanto told AFP.
"The delivery took place
naturally without human intervention," he said.
Visitors had for 10 years
tossed cigarettes to the famous smoking orangutan, who was moved in July to a
200-metre island at the zoo to force her to quit cold turkey.
Kristanto said Tori gave birth
on the island, where she is being kept with her mate and baby.
"We're very happy. The
baby is healthy and Tori is a good mother," he said, adding that the
orangutan smoked through most of her pregnancy.
Tori mated with a 20-year-old
orangutan in November 2011 and the birth is the first at the zoo since Tori was
born.
"Orangutans are critically
endangered, so this is good news for conservation. We have another young
orangutan pair here, so I hope there will be more orangutan babies here in the
future," he said.
Indonesian zoos have drawn
international criticism for poor treatment of animals. In March, a giraffe at
an eastern Java zoo was found dead with a 20-kilogram (44-pound) beachball-size
lump of plastic in its stomach from visitors' food wrappers thrown into its
pen.
Experts believe that between
50,000 and 60,000 of the two orangutan species are left in the wild, 80 percent
of them in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysia.
Orangutans are faced with
extinction from poaching and the rapid destruction of their forest habitat,
driven largely by palm oil and paper plantations.
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