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Upworthy Staff

Mama Sekali takes good care of her 3-month old.

There's nothing like the magic of new motherhood, when you find yourself spending hours marveling at the incredible being you helped create and gazing at their impossibly tiny and adorable features. It's sweet when humans do it, but seeing animals have those kinds of tender moments with their babies is so endearing.

Sekali, a Sumatran orangutan who lives at the Toronto Zoo, gave birth to a baby in April 2022. In a video shared by the zoo, the baby gets some "tummy time" while Sekali gently strokes and cuddles him. "Sekali continues to take excellent care of her little one, and he appears to be more alert and mobile," the zoo shared. "Keepers are seeing the baby standing up while holding onto mom and sitting up on his own now, so he is growing stronger each day."

The little guy is cute cute cute, but Sekali picking up his foot and "kissing" it is the sweetest darn thing ever.

Orangutan Tummy Time

- YouTubeyoutu.be

People gushed over the video on the zoo's Facebook page.

"LOOKS LIKE ALL MOMMA'S COUNTING THOSE LITTLE TOES AND FINGERS.... SHE APPEARS TO BE SUCH A TENDER MOM!! 🙂❤ I LOVE THIS!!!! 🙂" wrote one commenter.

"Clearly his Mom just adores him so much," wrote another. "She is such a good Mom.........he's so sweet and bright-eyed .....a happy and content little guy."

"I’m going to get in trouble for saying this, but, that little one is cuter than a lot of babies!!!! Just look how gentle she is with baby!!!" shared another.

A few months later in August 2022, the Toronto Zoo announced in a press release that the baby orangutan had been christened "Wali," which means "guardian" in Indonesian. Dolf Dejong, CEO of the Toronto Zoo, noted that the name was chosen from a batch of suggestions from the Wildlife Care keepers. Though there were many great suggestions, one stood out as the "clear winner," said DeJong. According to the Zoo's press release, the name felt "fitting since Sumatran Orangutans are the guardians of the rainforests."

While the Sumatran orangutans are seen as guardians, the sad truth is that the species is in trouble.

In 2017, Sumatran orangutans were moved from the International Union for Conservation and Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species' "endangered" category to "critically endangered," with their habitat in the wild threatened by deforestation, primarily due to palm oil plantations replacing rainforests. According to the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme in 2022, there were only around 14,000 orangutans left in the wild. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), that number has dipped even lower as of 2025.

rainforest, nature, environment, Sumatran orangutans, guardiansAccording to the Toronto Zoo, "countless [rainforest] plants and animals depend on the critically endangered orangutans for survival."Image via Canva

Orangutan breeding in captivity is not without its controversy, however. The purpose of captive breeding programs like the Orangutan Species Survival Plan is not to release the animals into the wild, but rather to maintain genetic diversity, enable research, and educate the public about these magnificent creatures. Zoos have come a long way in recent decades, creating habitats that look and feel much less like cages and more like the wild, and studies have shown that zoos have a positive impact on people's interest in conservation. Orangutans in human care, like Sekali, may help motivate more people to care about what's happening to the species in their home habitats.

“We are incredibly excited to welcome this new addition to the Toronto Zoo family,” said DeJong. “This orangutan baby is an important contribution to a genetically healthy Sumatran orangutan population in human care. Meanwhile, Sumatran orangutans are under increasing pressure in the wild due to habitat loss and the palm oil crisis, which we are working with partners to address. We are proud to play an important role in the conservation of this amazing species.”

Today, Wali is thriving with mama Sekali and dad Budi. A compilation of his "adorable antics" was shared on YouTube in early January, showing the public what Wali has been up to the last few years. Watch:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

If you'd like to learn more about orangutan conservation and how to help, visit the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme or check out the Toronto Zoo Wildlife Conservancy.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

Gotta save a few of these.

Ah Gen Z, the age group known for their brutal TikTok roasts (mostly of millennials) and their attitude towards workplace professionalism that’s just a tad, shall we say, more casual than previous generations. While this attitude might be jarring at times, it also can be delightfully refreshing.

Just ask the company Oilshore, which shared the hilarious “out of office” messages created by its Gen Z employees.

Whether they chose a clever, tongue-in-cheek approach, like “On vacation. Hoping to win the lottery and never return,” or something more direct and borderline threatening alá “Do not contact me while I’m on leave or I’ll report you to HR,” these Gen Z workers made their message loud and clear.

To no one’s surprise, the responses struck a particularly strong chord with millennials.

“They are so bold, I love it. As a millennial I be scared to be off of work,” one wrote.

Another added, “I wish I had this direct attitude but my millennial self would never be able to do that.”

Yet another praised these workers, saying, “Xennial here thinking Gen Z’s doing all the things I’ve dreamt of doing. Kings and queens changing work culture.”

Indeed, while Gen Zers might often get labeled as lazy or entitled, they are inspiring some pretty positive disruption. According to a Stanford Report, this generation prioritizes collaboration, mental health and work-life balance, transparency, and social impact and are demanding to see these types of changes in the workforce. That’s more than evident in these “out of office” messages.

Here’s another video with even more fun ones. Feel free to use some of these yourself, if you dare.

@oilshore Replying to @Rik O'Smithwick well at least they are being honest 😳 #workhumour #genzworker #corporatetiktok ♬ Coconut Mall (From "Mario Kart Wii") - Arcade Player

"Enjoying life! Will be back when I run out of money!" might be the truest sentence ever written.

But wait, there’s more where that came from. These Gen Z workers also have some pretty awesome email sign-offs for when they're finally back in the office. I will be stealing “mean regards” immediately.

In many ways, Gen Zers’ workplace values don’t differ that much from that of their post-Boomer predecessors. But there are other factors at play, like coming of age in the wake of a historic pandemic and the worldwide threat of climate change, as well as unprecedented digital connectivity that make all these events more visible, which undoubtedly influence their relentlessness in getting these needs met.

And thank goodness for that relentlessness, because it makes work a better place to be—in more ways than one. Luckily, more and more companies are getting on board with the Gen Z way of doing things. One example being the fun way in which (usually smaller) organizations are letting Gen Zers write their social media content, featuring plenty of "slays," "no caps," and that weird way of making heart hands.

With each generation, it seems we get one step closer to reframing how we view work, transforming it from a source of stress to maybe, juuuust maybe, a source of joy for all. Gen Z is certainly doing that…in their own sassy way.

This article originally appeared last year.

Time is really all about perception.

You're scrolling along, minding your own business on the internet, when this little chestnut comes across your timeline: "1980 and 2023 are as far apart as 1937 and 1980. Sleep tight, old fogies!"

Wait, what? Your first reaction is, "That can't be right," so you pull out the calculator and do the math yourself—several times because you're sure you must've missed a number somewhere each time. You remember how long ago 1937 seemed in 1980, and there's absolutely no way that much time passed between 1980 and 2023. Buy you're wrong. As the warped reality of time washes over you, you sit in stunned silence, contemplating the existential crisis you've just been thrown into.

Why does time work this way? Why does it seem to get faster and faster and condense to make decades seem shorter and shorter as we age? And perhaps more importantly, how the heck do we stop time from feeling like a runaway freight train?

Here are a few theories about what creates the freight train phenomenon and what to do about it.

Time perception is relative—and kids perceive it differently

"Time flies when you're having fun" is a saying for a reason. Time also drags when you're doing drudgery work and feels like it stands still in moments of significance. And yet the ticking of seconds as they go by doesn't change tempo. We measure it with steady, unchanging beats, but how it feels changes constantly.

kids playing, time passing, perception of timeTime moves more slowly for kids.Photo credit: Canva

This relativity exists in every passing moment, but it also exists in the bigger picture as well. The years felt like they passed by much more slowly when we were children, and by middle age, they feel like they pass in the blink of an eye. The pandemic gave us an even greater sense of this relativity as disruptions to our normal routines and the stress associated with the COVID-19 years messed with our sense of time. (On an odd side note, surveys show that our time perception during the pandemic varied a lot from place to place—people in some parts of the world felt that time moved more slowly, while others felt time moved more quickly.)

According to a 2023 Hungarian study published in Nature Scientific Reports, very young children perceive time differently than older children and adults. Researchers split 138 people into three age groups—pre-kindergarten, school-age and adults 18 and over—and showed them two videos of the same duration, one that was "eventful" and one that was "uneventful." Interestingly, the pre-K group perceived the eventful video to be longer, while the older children and adults saw the uneventful video as longer.

The way the study participants described the length of the videos in gestures was also telling. Young children were much more likely to use vertical hand gestures, connoting volume or magnitude, to indicate a length of time than the other two age groups. School-aged kids and adults tended to use horizontal gestures, indicating time as linear, increasing with age.

Our neural processing slows down as we age

Professor Adrian Bejan has a theory based on how neurons process signals. As we age, our neural networks increase in size and complexity and, as a result, process visual information at a slower rate. That slower processing means we create fewer mental images each second than we did when we were younger, thereby making time seem to slow down.

time, time perception, science of time, aging, neural processing, youth, lifespans, female aging, woman's face over the yearsA woman slowly ages over about 15 years.assets.rebelmouse.io

“People are often amazed at how much they remember from days that seemed to last forever in their youth, Bejan shared with Harvard University. "It’s not that their experiences were much deeper or more meaningful; it’s just that they were being processed in rapid fire.”

In other words, processing the same number of mental images we did in our youth takes longer now, somewhat counterintuitively making time seem to pass more quickly. So goes the theory, anyway.

It might simply be about time-to-life ratios

Another popular theory about why time feels different as a child than it does as an adult is the ratio of any given day, week or year to the amount of time we've been alive. To a 5-year-old, a year is 20% of their entire life. For a 50-year-old, a year only is 0.2% of their life, so it feels like it went by much more quickly.

hands, clocks, passage of time, age aging, old age, time perception, time fliesAn elderly person's hands holding a small clock.Photo credit: Canva

It's also a matter of how much change has happened in that year. A year in the life of a 5-year-old is full of rapid growth and change and learning and development. A year in the life of a 50-year-old probably isn't a whole lot different than when they were 48 or 49. Even if there are major life changes, the middle-aged brain isn't evolving at nearly the same rate as a child. A 50-year-old looking back at the past year will have a lot fewer changes to process than a 5-year-old, therefore the year will seems like it went by a lot faster.

“Our perception of days, weeks, years and that kind of time seems to be especially influenced by our perspective: Are we in the moment experiencing it, or are we looking backward on time?” psychology professor Cindy Lustig told the University of Michigan.

The key to slowing it all down? Be mindful of the present moment.

Lustig has a point. When we are in the moment, our perception of time is much different than when we look back. So, being fully conscious in the present moment can help us rein in the freight train effect.

One way to do that is to be mindful of your physical existence in this moment. Feel your heart beating. Feel your breath going in and out. Cornell University psychology professor Adam Anderson, Ph.D., conducted a study that found our perception of time may be linked with the length of our heartbeats. (Study participants were fitted with electrocardiograms and asked to listen to a brief audio tone. They perceived the tone as longer after a longer heartbeat and shorter after a shorter one.) He suggests starting a stopwatch, closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing for what you think feels like a minute. Then, check your time to see how accurate your estimation was.

Breathe World Series GIF by MLBGiphy

“This can give you a sense of how much your experience of your body is related to your experience of time,” Anderson told WebMD. “It will help teach you to enjoy the pure experience of time.”

You can also use focused breathing to purposely slow down your heart rate, and thus slow down your time perception. “We show that slow heart rates—that is, a longer duration between heartbeats—dilates time, slowing it down," Anderson said.

We can also alter our perception of time by taking in novel experiences, such as traveling to new places. According to Steve Taylor, author of Making Time: Why Time Seems To Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It, people who go on adventurous trips report that their vacations feel longer than those who choose a predictable destination. You can also make small changes to your daily routine, such as trying new foods or taking a new route home from work to take in some new stimuli and slow your perception of time.

A study in 2024 found that people who do intense exercise experience a time warp, feeling like they exercised longer than they really did, so if you want to temporarily slow down time, you can push your body hard during a workout.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Finally, try to take in the world the way you did as a small child. Take note of life's wonders. Engage fully in whatever you're doing. Notice details and take mental pictures as much as you can. Time goes by fast when we're distracted, so training our attention on the here and now can help. Ultimately, we can strive to perceive time more like we did when we were little, in its full depth and magnitude instead of a narrow, straight line.

This article originally appeared last year.

via Pexels
A woman sitting cross-legged on a yoga mat

Everyone wants to know how long they will live and there are many indicators that can show whether someone is thriving or on the decline. But scientists have yet to develop a magic formula to determine exactly how long someone should expect to live. Which, let's be real, is probably a good thing. Knowing exactly how much time you have left to enjoy your life could cause a lot of anxiety, to say the very least.

However, a doctor recently featured on the "Today" show says a straightforward test can reveal the likelihood that someone aged 51 to 80 will die in the near future. NBC News medical contributor Dr. Natalie Azar was on the "Today" show on March 8 and demonstrated how to perform the simple “sit to stand test” (aka sit-rising test or SRT) that can help determine the longevity of someone between 51 to 80.

The test is pretty simple. Go from standing to sitting cross-legged, and then go back to standing without using any parts of your body besides your legs and core to help you get up and down. The test measures multiple longevity factors, including heart health, balance, agility, core and leg strength and flexibility.


- YouTubewww.youtube.com

You begin the test with a score of 10 and subtract points on your way up and down for doing the following:

Hand used for support: -1 point

Knee used for support: -1 point

Forearm used for support: -1 point

One hand on knee or thigh: -1 point

Side of leg used for support: -1 point


A 2012 study published by the European Society of Cardiology found a correlation between the SRT score and how long people live.

The study was conducted on 2002 people, 68% of whom were men, who performed the SRT test and were followed by researchers in the coming years. The study found that “Musculoskeletal fitness, as assessed by SRT, was a significant predictor of mortality in 51–80-year-old subjects.”

Those who scored in the lowest range, 0 to 3, had up to a 6 times greater chance of dying than those in the highest scores (8 to 10). About 40% of those in the 0 to 3 range died within 11 years of the study.

aging, seniors, senior fitness, senior citizens, older adults, longevity, health, death, dyingNo matter what age you are, adding regular exercise to your life will reap a ton of benefits.Canva Photos

Azar distilled the study on "Today," saying: "The study found that the lower the score, you were seven times more likely to die in the next six years.”

"Eight points or higher is what you want," Azar said. "As we get older, we spend time talking cardiovascular health and aerobic fitness, but balance, flexibility and agility are also really important," she stressed. A score of eight or nine means you're allowed to roll forward onto your knees and then rise, which a lot of people will find more comfortable. If you can rise that way, you're still in a pretty good spot health wise.

One should note that the people who scored lowest on the test were the oldest, giving them a naturally elevated risk of death.

Dr. Greg Hartley, Board Certified Geriatric Clinical Specialist and associate professor at the University of Miami, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that we should take the study with a grain of salt. “Frailty, strength, muscle mass, physical performance—those things are all correlated to mortality, but I would caution everybody that correlation doesn’t mean causation,” he said.

And of course, the test doesn't take into account injuries or disabilities that may make doing the test impossible. But one of the study's authors says that the study is a call to take our mobility seriously.

“The more active we are the better we can accommodate stressors, the more likely we are to handle something bad that happens down the road,” Dr. Claudio Gil Araujo, told USA Today.

What should you do if you can't manage a good score on the SRT? First of all, don't panic! It's never too late to improve your overall health, fitness, and strength, so regular exercise is a great thing to incorporate if you're not already doing it.


seniors, longevity, physical fitness, exercise, health, agingEven low-impact exercise like yoga can increase your mobility and flexibility and, thus, your SRT scoreCanva Photos

A couple of specific skills that will help are boosting your ankle flexibility, hip mobility, and core strength. Trainers recommend incorporating squats, lunges, and planks into your regular routine. Just using your own bodyweight is plenty to get started, though if you're up for incorporating any added loads, the strength training will do wonders for your bone density, as well.

But remember that the SRT is just a measure of strength and mobility, which could correlate to an older person's likelihood of suffering from a fatal fall. It doesn't do anything to measure your cardiovascular help (vitally important especially in older people), for example. And it may not even be the most reliable longevity test out there. It has been criticized for it's extremely unnatural range of motion, for starters — rising by pushing up on the sides of our ankles with our knees pointed outward is certainly not representative of a real-life situation. Some doctors insist that your comfortable walking speed is a better indicator of health and longevity, while others say grip strength is the key measurement.

This article originally appeared two years ago.