Beloved Zurich Zoo gorilla is euthanized after years of declining health

GENEVA (AP) — The Zurich Zoo’s 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.

N’Gola was 47 and one of the oldest male gorillas in European zoos, said Zurich Zoo director Severin Dressen.

He was a Western lowland gorilla — a subspecies of the great apes found in Africa and listed as critically endangered — and because of his mature age he was a silverback, after the gray hair on his back.

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.

“It’s a hard decision to euthanize a silverback,” Dressen said.

“We’ve 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.

N’Gola was born in captivity and fathered 34 children. He was known for his sensitive side, taking “care of his harem, his group of females,” Dressen said.

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.

N’Gola spent weeks whimpering through the zoo enclosure looking for her, the report said.

Dressen also recalled a time when N’Gola looked after a baby gorilla in the group. “The mother wasn’t there, and he kind of — which is not a typical silverback behavior — took care of that baby.”

As for humans, N’Gola mostly ignored “other bipedal species on the other side of the glass” of his enclosure, Dressen said.