Death
In her last years, Pogo suffered from medical conditions related to her age, including heart problems, arthritis, and disc disease in her lower back, and spent her time napping. Gorilla keeper Mary Kerr, who had been caring for Pogo since 1981, found her dead on the morning of May 24, with her favorite doll by her side, and the stems from two bunches of grapes she had eaten the night before. It is thought that she died in her sleep. She weighed 210 pounds when she died. According to San Francisco Zoo senior veterinarian, Dr. Freeland Dunker, "We did what we could and regularly administered medications to ease her discomfort and control her conditions. Nonetheless, over the past five months in particular, she slowed down noticeably and her appetite diminished. Despite the efforts of veterinary staff, her condition continued to gradually decline."
Pogo's remains were donated to the University of California, Santa Cruz for anthropology research.
The death of Pogo brought back renewed heart ache of gorilla lovers who remembered a special albino gorilla called snowflake from the Barcelona zoo who died in 2001. Snowflake is believed to have been a distant relative of pogo who also carried the albino gene but was not albino.
Read more about this topic: Pogo (gorilla)
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—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
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