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Paris zoo gives orangutan a 50th birthday party

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Video courtesy Reuters
Nenette is not an ordinary orangutan - she is the oldest resident of the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where the Borneo-born ape arrived as a three-year-old in 1972.
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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Orangutan Nenette eats a cake as she celebrates her 50th birthday, at the Jardin des Plantes zoo in Paris today.

PARIS >> Nenette, one of the world’s oldest Borneo orangutans in captivity, has celebrated her 50th birthday at a zoo in Paris, where she has lived almost all her life.

Birthday cake, wrapped boxes and visitors singing “Happy Birthday” were part of the party held today for Nenette at Menagerie, a zoo in the Jardin des Plantes gardens.

She was treated to exotic fruits and ate a strawberry cake. Some of her favorite activities — painting and do-it-yourself workshops — were also on the party’s program.

Nenette is one of the last orangutans living in a zoo to be born out of captivity. She settled in Paris in 1972 at age 3.

The zoo says orangutans in the wild have experienced sharp population declines in the past 20 years.

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