The world’s oldest gorilla, named Ozzie, was found dead by his team of keepers at Zoo Atlanta, zoo officials announced. Ozzie was 61 years old.
Ozzie’s cause of death was not immediately known, although the animal had started showing a lack of appetite last week, the zoo said in a news release. The zoo’s veterinary team treated Ozzie for symptoms including facial swelling, weakness and an inability to eat or drink fluids.
Ozzie, a lowland gorilla, was the oldest male in the world and the third oldest.
“This is a devastating loss for Zoo Atlanta,” said Raymond Kind, the zoo’s president and CEO. “Ozzie’s life contributions are indelible, in the generations of individuals he leaves behind in the gorilla population and in the body of knowledge he leaves behind to the world in caring for his species.”
The Zoological and Exotic Animal Pathology Service at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine will perform the necropsy, according to the news release.
Ozzie was the sole survivor of a generation brought to Zoo Atlanta with the opening of the Ford African Rain Forest section in 1988. He became the world’s first gorilla to participate in a voluntary blood pressure reading in 2009.
The primate is survived by seven descendants at Zoo Atlanta and many more at other zoos in the United States and Canada, the news release notes.
Lowland gorillas are considered a threatened species due to poaching, habitat loss, and a drastic reduction in their population due to disease. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, its population has decreased by 60% and as much as 90% in some parts of West Africa.
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