Your morning adorable: Orangutan mother and baby at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo

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Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo is home to three endangered ape species: orangutans, western lowland gorillas and white-cheeked gibbons. In honor of its ape residents, the zoo is celebrating Ape Awareness Month throughout April. And among those apes honored this month are Sophia, a 27-year-old female orangutan, and her 6-month-old daughter (who hasn’t been named yet).

In the wild, young orangutans stay with their mothers for six or seven years. Mother orangutans only give birth about once every eight years. Orangutans are endangered in their native Borneo and Sumatra, due in large part to logging.

Orangutan is a Malay word meaning ‘person of the forest.’

Another great photo of mother and baby after the jump!

-- Lindsay Barnett