Visitors sang “Happy Birthday” as a birthday cake and wrapped boxes were brought in for Nenette’s 50th birthday party Sunday at Menagerie, a zoo located in the Jardin des Plantes gardens in Paris.
She enjoyed a feast of exotic fruits and a strawberry cake, provided by the zoo. Part of the party’s program was also some of her favorite activities, such as painting and do-it-yourself workshops.
Nenette is one of the world’s oldest Borneo orangutans in captivity. She has been in the zoo in Paris since 1972 at the age of three.
Orangutan population in the wild has been on a decline in the past 20 years. Almost 80% of orangutan habitat has disappeared after more than 3.5 million hectares of Indonesian and Malaysian forest were destroyed to make palm oil.
According to orangutan.org, 6,000 orangutans die every year because of it.
Related stories:
– Clinging to existence: Critically endangered animals
– Orangutan shot with 74 airgun pellets in Indonesia, recovers
– Orangutan kept as a sex slave in an Indonesian brothel
