What's the meaning?

So one of my friends asked me about the meaning of the following sentence:"Apes and monkeys in the wild are not separated for more than a few minutes from their newborn babies."

I read it as: "Apes and monkeys in the wild always stay with their newborns, except for a few minutes."

But my friend's book provided a quite different interpretation: "Apes and monkeys in the wild part with their newborns in a few minutes after giving birth."

What do you think about this? I've been examining for sentences with the similar phrase but I don't really think such interpretation is plausible...