A pioneering patriarch at Zoo Atlanta has earned yet another international distinction. Ozzie, a 51-year-old western lowland gorilla, is now the oldest living male gorilla. The only male on a short list of the zoological community’s longest-lived gorillas, he is also one of the top 10 oldest members of his species in the world.
Born in the wild in Africa in approximately 1961, Ozzie, whose given name is Ozoum, was part of an original group of western lowland gorillas that came to Zoo Atlanta from Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center in the late 1980s. As part of that group, he was one of the first individuals to explore the Zoo’s Ford African Rain Forest following its opening in 1988.
Someone get this man a golf membership and a condo in Boca, STAT!
(photo by Max Block on Flickr)
