IMAX movie "Born to Be Wild"

Take a heartwarming journey across the world to cheer on orphaned orangutans and elephants – and the people who rescue them – in “Born to Be Wild,” a family-friendly IMAX movie now playing in The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk.

With a film about baby elephants and orangutans, the cuteness factor barely fits inside Connecticut’s largest IMAX theater, with a screen that’s six stories high and eight stories wide, said Chris Loynd, the Aquarium’s marketing director.

Current show times are noon & 2 p.m. daily. (Call ahead to confirm times or text TMA to 71297.)

Academy Award®-winning actor Morgan Freeman narrates the film, which journeys into the lush rain forests of Borneo with orangutan expert Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas and across the rugged Kenyan savannah with elephant authority Dame Daphne Sheldrick. An inspiring story of love, dedication and the remarkable bond between humans and animals, “Born to Be Wild” shows that these women’s rescue and rehabilitation centers are places where endangered species are being saved, one life at a time.

Orangutan populations are falling, primarily because of loss of habitat but they’re also hunted for food, for perceived threats to property and for capture in the illegal pet trade.  Dr. Galdikas has been studying orangutans since 1971, when, as a graduate student, she met famed Kenyan paleontologist Louis Leakey and – along with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey – became one of “Leakey’s Angels,” doing groundbreaking field studies of primates. In 1986, she founded Orangutan Foundation International (OFI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of orangutans and their rain-forest habitat. OFI continues to operate an orangutan research area within Borneo’s Tanjung Puting National Park.

Like human babies, orangutan babies need a lot of care. In “Born to Be Wild,” Galdikas and her team care for orangutans from infant to teenager. Audiences see how humans act as surrogate orangutan parents, teaching the orphans skills they will need to survive on their own in the wild.

In Africa, poaching of adult elephants for their valuable ivory tusks often leaves their young unable to fend for themselves. A native of Kenya, Dame Daphne Sheldrick was just 3 years old when she adopted her first wild orphan, a baby bushbuck antelope. In 1955, she married conservationist David Sheldrick, who created the giant Tsavo National Park from virgin bush. Over the decades, Dame Daphne has raised and rehabilitated orphans of many different wild species, and is the first person to have perfected the milk formula and husbandry necessary for infant elephants and rhinos. She remains chairman of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.

“Born to Be Wild” shows how Sheldrick and her staff help orphaned baby elephants learn the social skills they will need to once again become part of a herd family. Elephants need strong social interaction and support. Sheldrick’s trainers each care for a single baby elephant at a time, even to the point of sleeping with their adopted orphan.

Music for the film was composed by Mark Mothersbaugh, lead singer of the ’70s new wave rock band Devo who has since gone on to score more than 70 film and television projects.

The Warner Bros. film is 40 minutes long. It was produced by IMAX Filmed Entertainment and distributed by IMAX Corporation and Warner Bros. Pictures.

View the film’s trailer – and purchase tickets in advance – on the Aquarium’s website: www.MaritimeAquarium.org.

For more information about The Maritime Aquarium’s IMAX movies, exhibits and other offerings, call (203) 852-0700 or go online to www.MaritimeAquarium.org.