Rosie (Mata Hari)

Western lowland gorillas face extinction in the wild, with fewer than 100,000 left across their African range. Rosie (Mata Hari) was born into this critically endangered subspecies at Cincinnati Zoo in August 1974, the daughter of Mahari and Hatari.

For over two decades, she remained at her birth zoo before moving to Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo in 2001. The transfer marked the beginning of a fourteen-year chapter in Nebraska, where she lived until 2015.

Her final years were spent at North Carolina Zoological Park, where she arrived in April 2015. Three years later, veterinarians discovered an aggressive abdominal mass. She was euthanized in June 2018, ending a life that spanned nearly four decades and three institutions dedicated to her subspecies’ survival.