SimSim

Western lowland gorillas face extinction in the wild, with fewer than 100,000 left across their African range. SimSim was born into this critically endangered subspecies at Yerkes Primate Center in January 1986, the offspring of Shamba and Rann.

At six years old, he made the move to Busch Gardens Tampa in 1992. There he would spend the majority of his life — more than two and a half decades within the same facility. His long tenure at Tampa made him one of the zoo’s most established great apes.

As SimSim aged, he developed a degenerative condition in his right leg that eventually compromised his quality of life. After 33 years, keepers made the difficult decision to euthanize him in September 2019. His three decades represented a substantial lifespan for a gorilla in managed care, during which time his subspecies continued to face mounting pressure from habitat loss and poaching across Central and West Africa.