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Eve, a 24-year-old orangutan at Utah's Hogle Zoo, died Sunday of an undetermined cause about 3½ weeks after giving birth to a son, zoo officials said Wednesday.
Spokeswoman Erica Hansen said zoo officials do not believe her death was related to childbirth. A necropsy, an animal autopsy, did not pinpoint a cause of death but showed that Eve had several medical problems that had not been apparent before.
The baby orangutan, an orphan because his father, Eli, died in September of complications from breast cancer, has been receiving around-the-clock care since being delivered by cesarean section Nov. 4. The unnamed baby is doing well, Hansen added.
But the death of Eve has caused considerable grief at the zoo, where she resided for 19 years.
"I can't even begin to put into words the heartache the entire ape team is feeling right now," said senior ape keeper Bobbi Gordon, who has worked with Eve for 10 years. "When I started at Hogle Zoo, she was my biggest challenge. You didn't get to just walk into a relationship with Eve. You had to earn it.
"There is an emptiness in the Great Ape Building that echoes through our day."
Eve had been picked as a mate for Eli at the recommendation of the Orangutan Species Survival Plan, an international conservation program of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums that seeks to maintain genetic diversity among endangered species.
The union succeeded. Within a year of his 2004 arrival from the Topeka Zoo, Eli and Eve became the parents of a girl named Acara on Valentine's Day in 2006. As Acara grew up under Eve's watchful eye, Eli became famous for picking the winners of seven straight Super Bowls.
Then, in late winter, Eve became pregnant again. She was monitored closely by zoo staff (orangutans have gestation periods of seven to nine months) and checked frequently by veterinarians, said Hogle Zoo's senior veterinarian Nancy Carpenter.
Hansen said zoo staff had hoped Eve would give birth naturally, "but she couldn't" and the baby boy was delivered by C-section. Eve initially responded well to the surgery, she added, but then her behavior changed.
"We were concerned," Carpenter said. "But then she'd have days that she would perk up and we thought we were making progress. She even did some training [exercises] Friday."
But two days later, Eve was dead.
"Our animals talk to us through the keepers and their behaviors. It can be difficult to tell how ill they are if they hide their symptoms from us, which for them is normal to do," Carpenter said, adding that the necropsy revealed "multiple problems."
Hansen said blood samples have been sent to a laboratory in hopes of getting more complete answers. But for now, she added, "it's one of those things where [the doctors] shake their heads and they don't really know."
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