<\/img><\/p>\n
The Phoenix Zoo is used to hosting birthday parties, but this one was a little different.<\/p>\n
Duchess the orangutan turned 50 on Saturday, and the zoo treated her to gifts, an ice cake filled with fruit and a rendition of "Happy Birthday" by hundreds of zoo visitors.<\/p>\n
Her keeper, Bob Keesecker, said Duchess didn’t seem too stressed about the milestone.<\/p>\n
"I told her it was her birthday today and she didn’t seem to be overly concerned about it," he said. "I made sure her hair looked good before she went out."<\/p>\n
Keesecker said Duchess has quite a sweet tooth and worked pretty hard to get to the fruit in the ice cake.<\/p>\n
Zoo officials say Duchess is the nation’s oldest captive Bornean orangutan, and is now 10 years older than the 40-year life expectancy of orangutans in the wild.<\/p>\n
Duchess was just 2 years old when the zoo opened in 1962, and is one of only a few remaining original animals. She has given birth seven times and lives with one of her daughters, her daughter’s mate, and their daughter.<\/p>\n
Keesecker said that besides a strong devotion to food, Duchess also enjoys painting pictures on canvas and cleaning her own pen with a scrubbing brush and a bucket of water.<\/p>\n
Saturday’s birthday party included the groundbreaking of a $4-million orangutan exhibit that will provide a more natural environment for Duchess and her family. Zoo officials hope the exhibit will allow them to add more orangutans in the future.<\/p>\n
The new exhibit will be part of the zoo’s overall $20-million makeover that includes a recently opened Komodo dragon exhibit and a future Sumatran tiger exhibit.<\/p>\n
— Associated Press<\/p>\n
Stay up-to-date on animal news: Follow Unleashed on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Photo: Duchess in an undated photo. Credit: Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Phoenix Zoo is used to hosting birthday parties, but this one was a little different. Duchess the orangutan turned 50 on Saturday, and the zoo treated her to gifts, an ice cake filled with fruit and a rendition of "Happy Birthday" by hundreds of zoo visitors. Her keeper, Bob Keesecker, said Duchess didn’t seem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-483569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}