The oldest gorilla in the world received a basket of fruits and vegetables for his 66th birthday | Feel good

The presents with lots of berries – her favorite food – were all easy to chew because the female gorilla has no teeth. According to her regular caregiver, Fatou is very old. “In the wild, gorillas live between 45 and 50 years old. Much older in zoos, but 66 is really very special,” Ruben Gralki told German media.

He has been taking care of Fatou for 25 years. The secret of his old age? “Especially vegetables. She used to eat the latter raw, but for the past ten years you have to cook it first,” continued the janitor. He is also the neighbor of birthday boy Jet, as he has lived in a Berlin Zoo staff residence since 2011. From his apartment above the great ape house, it takes him only five minutes to get to at work.

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Fatou has been at the zoo since 1959. She was estimated to be two years old at the time. A French sailor reportedly brought her back from Africa and handed her over to a bar in the port of Marseille to pay her unpaid bill. The owner contacted the Berlin Zoo, which was already known to keep monkeys. The zoo was ready to welcome the female gorilla, after which the Frenchwoman flew to Berlin with her in the cabin.

In 1974, Fatou had her first and only offspring Dufte, a female who died in 2001. Since 2009, the mother gorilla has been separated from the rest of the group due to her age.

In 2019, the Guinness Book of World Records named Fatou the oldest living captive gorilla in the world. Before that, Trudy, a gorilla from 1956, held the title, but on July 24, 2019, she breathed her last at the Little Rock Zoo, Arkansas in the United States at the age of 63.