Photo: Chapultepec Zoo

By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF

Toto, the last surviving orangutan in Mexico City’s Chapultepec Zoo, has died, the city’s Environment Secretariat (Sedema) reported late Wednesday, Dec. 8.

Toto, a male ape that was donated to Mexico by the Indonesian government, was one month short of reaching age 30.

According to zoo sources, he had begun to be listless and to show a decrease in appetite two days earlier, apparently due to a gastrointestinal disorder.

Despite heroic efforts by a team of zoo veterinarians, Toto did not respond to medical intervention.

Orangutans, which are native to Indonesia and Malaysia, tend to live between 30 and 45 years in captivity.

These great apes are considered critically endangered, having registered more than a 90 percent drop in their populations over the course of the last 10 years.

The probability of their extinction in the wild is at least 50 percent within the next decade, mainly due to a loss of their natural habitat to lumbering and palm oil farms.