Mundo Azul supports the Amazon Orphanage Pilpintuwasi
“Lola” and “Lukas”, the tapirs
The female tapir’s mother was killed by some people near the village where Robler is from. The hunters ate and sold the adult tapir and tried to raise the baby. But, as most people in the Peruvian Amazon don’t have milk even for their own children, they fed the tapir baby with sweet tea – which definitely isn’t enough. When the animal tried to escape, they bound her forefeet with fishing line. The nylon cut the flesh of the tapir, and when she couldn’t stand up anymore the people noticed that she had deep wounds on her feet and they called Pilpintuwasi, asking if they wanted to take the animal and try to heal her. At that time “Lola” was about half a year old – still with white stripes and spots on her fur.
When we went to get her, we found that the nylon had cut her almost into the bones and the wounds were infected. Fortunately she recovered and is now a beautiful and very gentle adult tapir. Visitors can enter the cage to feed or touch her, and the children can even ride on her – as long as we give her some food.
“Lukas” is another Tapir, who arrived at Pilpintuwasi in January 2007. It’s a male and he was left at Pilpintuwasi because the ecological police had asked us to take him, after the people who had killed the mother had tried to sell him for over 10 days at the port and hadn’t fed him well. He was still a baby, was very skinny and had a terrible skin disease. When he enterred Lola’s cage the little thing went straight to Lola, bumped his head into her belly…. – and Lola lay down on her back, and let the baby suck on her nipples!  She adopted him, and although she doesn’t produce any milk, she behaves like a mother to him – watching him, looking for him, when he’s not on her side etc
Lukas still drinks about 4 liters of milk with oats and vitamins every day, besides he eats whatever Lola eats. He’s now loosing the spots – that means he’s about a year old.
Help us repairing a little bit of the damage humans have done to these animals.
• $5 will care for one of the turtles for a month;
• $30 for feed Rosa the anteater until she moves onto ants;
• $50 will feed all of the birds;
• $280 will feed Pedro Bello, the Jaguar;