The Berlin Zoo's Fatou, who is tied as the oldest gorilla on Earth, has come a long way since a drunken French sailor handed her over to settle a bar tab. The grand lady was treated to a feast of sweets for her birthday.
Fatou, the oldest gorilla in Europe, celebrated her 60th birthday at the Berlin Zoo on Thursday. The grand dame was feted with a buffet of pineapple, bananas, grapes and of course - her favorite - a cake made of cooked rice and raisins.
"She loves sweets," said Ruben Gralki, the deputy head of the great ape section at the zoo, according to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. "Normally gorillas eat only green plants."
At Fatou's birthday party, her caretakers regaled guests with the story of how she came to Berlin 58 years ago. The tale goes back to a drunken French sailor who could not pay his exorbitant bill at a bar in Marseille. Instead he gave the barkeeper a baby gorilla he had picked up on a recent trip to West Africa. The very confused woman then called the Berlin Zoo to take care of the small animal.
Happy Birthday! Heute feiert unsere Gorilla-Dame #Fatou im #ZooBerlin ihren 60. Geburtstag mit vielen Leckereien. zoo-berlin.de/de/aktuelles/n…
When Fatou arrived in Berlin, a caretaker brought male gorilla Knorke to Tempelhof airport to pick her up. The two apes would remain inseparable for decades.
Although Knorke died in 2003, Fatou is still in good health to this day. Together with Trudy from the Little Rock Zoo in the US state of Arkansas, she is tied as the oldest known gorilla in the world.
All species of gorilla are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Gorillas have long been poached for their meat, and large parts of the population have been affected by diseases that also affect humans, like Ebola.
In October 2007, nations with some of the world's largest gorilla populations, including Rwanda, Gabon, Nigeria, and Uganda signed the "Gorilla Agreement" at a summit in Bonn, Germany.
With help from the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences and conservation group GRASP, the treaty is a binding agreement aimed at ending poaching and protecting gorilla habitats.
source:dw
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