“Our Lady Gorilla is celebrating her 65th birthday today, making her the oldest gorilla in the world,” the zoo wrote on Instagram.
“The traditional birthday cake can’t be missing this year either. The birthday dish is always something very special for Fatou,” the zoo said. The photos included in the publication show the huge primate enjoying a cake decorated with berries and fruits to form the numbers “65”.
Fatou arrived in Berlin in 1959 through what the zoo described as “unusual circumstances” in a press release on her 61st birthday.
A sailor used the young gorilla to pay his bill at a tavern in Marseille, France, which was then transported across Europe before being eventually bought by a German zoo. It is estimated that he is only two years old at the time of his arrival.
In 2019, Fatou was named “the oldest living gorilla in captivity” by the Guinness Book of World Records after Trudy, a gorilla born in 1956, died.
Fatou is one of the only animals in the Berlin Zoo born in the wild, according to a press release.
Captive gorillas usually live up to 50 years, Guinness said.
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