Pogo (gorilla)

Western lowland, SF Zoo (1958–2006)

Pogo (1958 – May 24, 2006) was a female western lowland gorilla who was a feature of the Gorilla World exhibit at the San Francisco Zoo. Pogo was a childless but motherly matriarch, loved by generations of San Franciscans. When she died at the age of 48, she was believed to have been one of the oldest living gorillas in captivity.

Pogo was born in 1958, in the rainforests of French Cameroon, where she was part of a gorilla troop that included Bwana, a gorilla who would eventually find his way to the Zoo in 1959. Pogo was orphaned after her parents were killed, most likely for bushmeat. She was adopted by American missionaries and a nurse in a Cameroon leper colony, where she rode motorcycles, dressed up in clothes, and attended tea parties. In 1961, at the age of three, Pogo was purchased by philanthropist Carroll Soo Hoo, and donated to the San Francisco Zoo.

In the late 1980s, Pogo moved into Gorilla World, a large habitat for western lowland gorillas, covering almost an acre of land, with trees, grasses, and rocky outcroppings. Here, Pogo helped raise one male, silverback Oscar Jonesy, and three female gorillas, Zura, Bawang, and Bawang's daughter Nneka. Pogo was fond of a gorilla doll given to her by her keeper, and was often seen carrying it on her back and under her arm, and sleeping with the doll. One writer described Pogo as "stubborn"; she enjoyed sitting outside alone in the rain while the other animals huddled for cover. In 2005, primate behavior specialist Joanne Tanner described Pogo as a "mature auntie gorilla".

In her last years, Pogo suffered from medical conditions related to her age, including heart problems, arthritis, and disc disease in her lower back, and spent her time napping. The death of Pogo brought back renewed heart ache of gorilla lovers who remembered a special albino gorilla called Snowflake from the Barcelona Zoo who died in 2001. Snowflake is believed to have been a distant relative of Pogo who also carried the albino gene but was not albino.