Zoo Atlanta mourns death of 50-year-old gorilla

Zoo Atlanta says 50-year-old Ivan, a male lowland gorilla, never regained consciousness after he was put under general anesthesia Monday for a diagnostic assessment.

The zoo says the geriatric ape had recently lost weight, seemed to lack appetite and had a respiratory illness.

Ivan had lived at Zoo Atlanta since 1994. He was born in the wild around 1962 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Wildlife traders sold him to the owners of a department store in Tacoma, Wash., in 1964. Three years later, he was moved to an indoor enclosure at the store.

Facing pressure from zoological and animal rights communities, the store in 1994 donated Ivan to a zoo in Seattle, which transferred him to Atlanta.