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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080905/ap_on_re_us/oldest_gorilla_dies;_ylt=A0wNcxKjp8FIWaIAEAGs0NUE

Oldest gorilla in captivity dies in Dallas at 55

By LINDA STEWART BALL, Associated Press Writer

The oldest gorilla in captivity, a 55-year-old female named Jenny, has
died at the Dallas Zoo — her home for more than half a century, a
spokesman said Friday.

Zoo officials decided to euthanize Jenny on Thursday night because of
an inoperable tumor in her stomach. Jenny had stopped eating and
drinking recently, and tests showed she was unlikely to recover,
spokesman Sean Greene said.

Jenny's keepers described her as very sweet though a little bossy.

"If she doesn't want to go out on a certain day, she doesn't," Todd
Bowsher, curator of the zoo's Wilds of Africa exhibit, said in May,
when the zoo held a birthday bash to celebrate Jenny's longevity. "But
she really likes people."

The International Species Information System, which maintains records
on animals at 700 institutions around the world, confirmed earlier
this year that Jenny was the oldest gorilla in its database.

Jenny was born in the wild and was acquired by the zoo in 1957. She
gave birth in 1965 to a female named Vicki, and officials aren't sure
why she didn't conceive again. Vicki was sent to a Canadian zoo at age
5.

At the time of Jenny's death she was one of five gorillas at the Dallas Zoo.

Gorillas in the wild normally live to age 30 or 35, but they can
survive years longer in a zoo, with veterinary care and protection
from predators. Still, of the roughly 360 gorillas in North American
zoos, only four were over 50 as of this spring.

Just last month, another gorilla at the zoo, 43-year-old Hercules,
died after undergoing a medical procedure for spinal disease.

In 2004, Dallas police shot and killed a 13-year-old gorilla named
Jabari at the zoo after it jumped over a wall, bit three people and
snatched up a toddler by his teeth. The enclosure was remodeled and
the city paid a fine to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.