Jungle ape Duma dies

30 July 2015 - 02:02 By Shaun Smillie

The Joburg zoo's only Sumatran Orang-utan has died. Duma died yesterday of heart failure, while under general anaesthetic.Joburg zoo spokeswoman Noeleen Mattera said that Duma had not been well. He hadn't been eating and appeared depressed. “They decided to give him a fully health examination, it was during this that he suffered a cardiac arrest,” she explained.Vets tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate him. It was discovered that he had an enlarged heart.Duma was born in 1989, at Leipzig Zoo, in Germany and was brought to the Joburg zoo in 1998.In the wild, Sumatran orang-utan is considered critically endangered. Ten years ago their were believed to be 7,300 Sumatran orang-utans in the wild. Their populations have declined by 80% in the last 75 years.The main threat to the ape has been rapid habitat loss from logging and forest fires. Another factor is the destruction of large areas of tropical forest to make way for palm oil plantations. ..

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