Fun fact: that’s probably exactly backwards. The name Caesar does come from the word caedere meaning “cut” (at least, according to Pliny). Before Caesar was born, a law was put in place saying that women who died while pregnant must have the baby removed before burial (for religious reasons apparently?), and the Romans knew that if you did this when the mother died during childbirth you’d sometimes be able to save the child (though not the mother - this procedure was fatal in Roman times).
Caesar wasn’t born by C Section, because his mother lived. But (again according to Pliny), he may have been named after an ancestor who was.
And I’d think you’d want a veterinary anesthesiologist, used to dealing with uncooperative patients. But the c-section part seems like it would be something an ordinary obstetrician would be comfortable with.
There is a long tradition of human specialist physicians proving expertise (especially specialty surgical) in the care of zoo animals.
See here from 1994 for example.
From a practical POV a zoo veterinarian has not had many or possibly any opportunities to do this procedure on any animals. An OBG for humans has done many on the very closely related species of us.
Humans have a more difficult delivery process than other primates. Large heads matched to a relatively small pelvis that relatively faces backwards.
In case anyone was wondering, it looks like Mom is bonding to the baby just fine, at least according to the brief video I saw on ABC News (they brought in the infant wrapped in a towel and laid it down near the mother, who immediately on seeing a tiny arm raised out of the towel, raced over and scooped up the baby).
The answers already given seem quite good to me. From my perspective of having delivered a few hundred babies in my career, plus being first assistant in a number of C-sections I have confidence that an obstetrician (with appropriate support from anesthesiologists and veterinarians) would have the necessary skills and not be overly daunted to do a large primate C-section.
I’m reminded of a med school class. We were learning about cardiomyopathies. The professor, a pathologist, showed us a heart and asked us to diagnose the condition. As a group we were able to get it right, I believe it was a dilated cardiomyopathy. We were all proud of ourselves. Then he told us what we had all missed. The heart was from a big cat, I think it was a tiger but memory is cloudy, of the Brookfield zoo.
When I was a kid our vet told us about an elderly woman brought in her goldfish. She was very upset that her fish was sick. The vet told her to leave the fish with him overnight, then had one of his staff go to the store (this was back when you could get goldfish at Woolworth’s) to find an identical fish. The woman was ecstatic the next day when she found out that the vet had saved her fish.
47-817. Practice without license prohibited; exceptions. No person shall practice veterinary medicine in this state who is not currently and validly a licensed veterinarian. This act shall not be construed to prohibit:
(a) An employee of the federal, state or local government performing such employee’s official duties.
(b) A person from gratuitously giving aid, assistance or relief in veterinary emergency cases if such person does not represent themselves to be veterinarians or use any title or degree appertaining to the practice thereof.
This inspires me to ask about the relative internal similarity of chimps vs. people and if one of the doctors here would feel comfortable doing a chimp section with a vet standing by and no experience. This may be better as its own question, though.
I knew a guy years ago with a pet monkey of some sort. When the animal was ill, he eventually drove to New York’s Animal Medical Center, because there were no closer veterinarians who would work on a non-human primate.
A similar thing happened to a guy with a “pet” rattlesnake. He had to travel to find veterinary services because although local vets saw reptiles, none saw venomous reptiles due to liability concerns.
I come from a family of vets and doctors. And one of my dad’s (a vet) favourite factoids is that vets are allowed to operate on people (in a life threatening emergency) but doctors are not allowed to operate on animals.
I guess it might not be true, at least not anymore in the US (my dad retired, in the UK, many years ago)
I’m glad to hear that vets are allowed to operate on humans in an emergency. We were discussing that last night. I’d far rather be treated by a vet than bleed out, etc. And in a situation like that, I’d far prefer being treated by a vet to being treated by someone with less training.
If you think about it, vets, and especially exotic vets, are already used to the idea of cutting into a critter they only sorta know their way around the insides of. And of medically managing a critter they sorta know the vital parameters of. Which is exactly the situation they’d face cutting into or treating a human for the first time.
Skill & confidence are two different aspects of expertise, among many others. The vets’ multi-critter reality has gotta help them in the confidence part of the ledger.
Thank you for locating and sharing that. It looks, to me, like (b) is exactly what this situation was: the OB/GYNs were providing aid to the zoo’s medical team in addressing an emergency situation with one of the animals, and they were clearly not representing themselves to be veterinarians.