TAMPA, Fla. — Luna loved the ultrasound game.

The 26-year-old orangutan at Busch Gardens would come up to the mesh screening that separates the primates from the humans that care for them and happily present her belly.

Dr. Maria Spriggs, chief veterinarian at Busch Gardens, would use that play time to put an ultrasound probe on Luna’s belly and track the progress of her pregnancy.

“She really liked to eat the ultrasound gel. She thinks that’s really fun,” Spriggs said.

Luna gave birth to a female baby orangutan April 13 at the Tampa theme park. It was a rare, if not historic, event: There have only been 11 cesarean sections in the past 20 years of orangutan births in American zoos, out of 139 births of the critically endangered species, according to the Association of Zoos & Aquariums.

A team of nearly two dozen medical professionals were called in for Luna’s delivery — not just veterinary but also human doctors who specialize in maternity and newborn care.

They recounted their stories of a remarkable day in the theme park’s Animal Care Center when they saved a baby using tools from the maternity ward.

Because humans and great apes are so alike in biology, the theme park called on Dr. Catherine Lynch, a well-regarded Tampa obstetrician-gynecologist, to look at the snapshots they were able to catch from ultrasounds.

On a visit in early April, she was alarmed. The baby was breech, lying bottom-down instead of head-down in the uterus. And, even more alarming, the umbilical chord was underneath her.

“If that had come out first, that would have been catastrophic to the baby,” cutting off her oxygen supply, Lynch said.

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