GENEVA (AP) \u2014 The Zurich Zoo\u2019s beloved gorilla of more than 40 years has been put down after a long struggle with declining health, a zoo official in the Swiss city said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
N\u2019Gola was 47 and one of the oldest male gorillas in European zoos, said Zurich Zoo director Severin Dressen.<\/p>\n
He was a Western lowland gorilla \u2014 a subspecies of the great apes found in Africa and listed as critically endangered \u2014 and because of his mature age he was a silverback, after the gray hair on his back.<\/p>\n
N’Gola had suffered a host of health ailments, including arthritis, a heart condition and a tapeworm infection. He had been on painkillers for several years, eating less, and losing weight and muscle mass.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a hard decision to euthanize a silverback,\u201d Dressen said.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019ve seen a crash in the wild over the span of three generations of 80% of the population,” Dressen said about the decline of gorillas in the wild. Zoos can be helpful for research and public education about species protection, he added.<\/p>\n
N’Gola was born in captivity and fathered 34 children. He was known for his sensitive side, taking \u201ccare of his harem, his group of females,\u201d Dressen said.<\/p>\n
In 2012, the female Nache in his harem suffered a burst appendix during advanced pregnancy, and both she and the unborn baby gorilla died, according to the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuricher Zeitung.<\/p>\n
N\u2019Gola spent weeks whimpering through the zoo enclosure looking for her, the report said.<\/p>\n
Dressen also recalled a time when N’Gola looked after a baby gorilla in the group. “The mother wasn\u2019t there, and he kind of \u2014 which is not a typical silverback behavior \u2014 took care of that baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for humans, N’Gola mostly ignored “other bipedal species on the other side of the glass\u201d of his enclosure, Dressen said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GENEVA (AP) \u2014 The Zurich Zoo\u2019s beloved gorilla of more than 40 years has been put down after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[3918,70,3917,16,15,3915,1717,3916],"class_list":{"0":"post-6744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-baby-gorilla","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-severin-dressen","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-western-lowland-gorilla","14":"tag-wildlife","15":"tag-zurich-zoo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114311780797290498","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}