The oldest gorilla in captivity celebrated her 65th birthday at the Berlin Zoo this week.
Fatou, a western lowland gorilla, enjoyed a custom-made cake of vegetables and rice, People reported.
“Our Gorilla lady is celebrating her 65th birthday today, making her the oldest Gorilla in the world,” the zoo wrote on Instagram.
Officials from the German zoo shared a clip of Fatou enjoying the cake, which also had a peach slide, a blueberry border and the numbers “6″ and “5″ written in raspberries and blueberries, the website reported.
“The traditional birthday cake could not be missing this year either. The birthday meal is always something very special for Fatou,” the zoo said in its post.
Fatou arrived in Berlin in 1959, CNN reported. The primate arrived at the zoo through “unusual circumstances” in a 2017 news release.
A sailor used the young gorilla to pay his tab at a tavern in Marseilles, France, after which she was transported across Europe before eventually being purchased by the zoo, the release stated. At the time, she was estimated to be 2 years old.
“For her exceptionally old age, Fatou is a very vigorous old lady with a healthy appetite,” district manager Christian Aust said in a statement released by the Berlin Zoo. “We are happy every day that she is with us and hope to be able to celebrate a few more birthdays with her.”
In 2019, Fatou was named the “oldest living gorilla in captivity” by Guinness World Records after Trudy, a gorilla born in 1956, died at the Little Rock Zoo.
Fatou is one of the only animals at the Berlin Zoo born in the wild, CNN reported.
“Gorillas living in the wild have a life expectancy of about 40 years and at 65, she has been the world’s oldest living gorilla for a while,” Aust told the BBC.
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