Meet Jolene: Baby orangutan whose auburn fur reminded Oregon Zoo of Dolly Parton song

A baby orangutan, with “flaming locks of auburn hair,” just made her debut at the Oregon Zoo.

Zoo staff named the 3-week old orangutan Jolene, after the iconic song by country music legend Dolly Parton. In particular, the color of her fur reminded them of the song’s main character, according to a news release from the Oregon Zoo.

Jolene was born to first-time mother Kitra, a 20-year-old Bornean orangutan who has lived at the zoo since 2015. Zoo staff were prepared to assist her with the birth and early days of motherhood, but she hasn’t needed much help parenting so far, the release said.

“We’ve never been so happy to put in hours of work on something that didn’t happen,” Kate Gilmore, who supervises the zoo’s primate area, said in the release. “We were prepared to step in if Kitra needed us, but she’s done everything perfectly on her own so far.”

Zoo staff took a few weeks to come up with the baby’s name — for a while, they weren’t quite sure what her gender was.

“Because we’re giving Kitra and her baby plenty of room to bond, we were unable to tell if she’d had a boy or a girl until recently,” Gilmore said. “Once we confirmed she was a girl, our keeper team knew right away what they wanted to call her. They’ve been playing the song on repeat ever since.”

Visitors can probably catch a glimpse of Kitra and Jolene enjoying the sunshine in their outdoor habitat, though it’s dependent on Kitra’s comfort, the release said.

“Kitra can decide whether she and Jolene are up for a trip outside or if they’d rather have privacy,” Gilmore said. “As Jolene gets older and more curious, we expect them to be outside more and more.”

Baby orangutans are usually in gestation for about 8 and a half months and weigh around 3 pounds at birth, the release said. The infants are completely dependent on their mothers for their first two years of life, making mothers and their children very close, the release said.

The animals are considered critically endangered, meaning they face an “extremely high risk of extinction in the wild,” according to the World Wildlife Fund. Wild orangutans are threatened by habitat loss, as well as hunting and poaching, the zoo said.

The song Jolene isn’t based on a real person — Parton has said it’s partly based on a bank teller with fiery red hair who would flirt with her husband and partly on a young fan named Jolene who asked her for an autograph, NPR reported.

But the connection between baby Jolene and her mother is very real.

“The bond between an orangutan mom and her baby is one of the closest of any species,” the release said.

This story was originally published May 6, 2022 at 2:09 PM with the headline "Meet Jolene: Baby orangutan whose auburn fur reminded Oregon Zoo of Dolly Parton song."