Chimp’s Death Attributed To Heart Failure

Heart failure has been determined as the cause of death for Koby, a 29-year-old male chimpanzee that died last week at the North Carolina Zoo.

According to Dr. Barbara Wolfe, the zoo’s senior veterinarian, results of lab tests as well as physical evidence obtained during autopsy showed that Koby had suffered one or more previous heart attacks, probably four to eight months before his death. Neither the chimpanzee’s keepers nor the zoo veterinary staff had been aware of the earlier heart attacks.

Damage to the heart’s muscles and electrical conduction system caused by the previous episodes, as well as hardening of the arteries, led to the fatal cardiac event on February 8, Wolfe said.

“Any time he got excited, he risked a fatal arrhythmia,” the veterinarian explained.

 “This could have happened during a conflict with other members of the troop and explains why his heart did not respond at all to the resuscitative efforts of the veterinary and EMT staff last week.”

Cardiovascular disease is not uncommon among great apes, Wolfe added. Chimpanzees rarely live past their 40’s in the wild, but have been known to reach the age of 60 in captivity.
 
       
Koby was one of the first two chimps brought into the N.C. Zoo’s animal collection in 1978. Along with another male chimp, Hondo, the zoo acquired Koby from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) which had seized the two chimps shortly after their arrival in the U.S. from Liberia. A private individual trying to import the animals had not acquired the proper paperwork and relinquished ownership to USFWS, which in turn gave the animals to the zoo.
        
Koby had been exhibited in the zoo’s outdoor chimpanzee exhibit since it first opened in 1979 and had sired nine offspring. The N.C. Zoo still maintains one of the largest chimp collections in U.S. zoos, with two males and 10 females in the troop.