A chimpanzee once hooked on smoking by visitors offering it cigarettes has died at a South African zoo at the relatively advanced age of 52, officials said today.
"He appears to have died of old age," said municipal spokesman Qondile Khedama. An autopsy will be conducted to determine the exact cause of death.
"Charlie the smoking chimp" used to put two fingers to his mouth to mimic smoking and reach out with his other hand to bum cigarette butts from visitors at Bloemfontein Zoo.
But when videos of him puffing away circulated globally a few years ago, zoo officials moved to cut off the supply of smokes.
The nickname stuck even though the cigarette habit faded. The life expectancy for chimps in the wild is about 15 years and only 7 per cent of wild chimps live past 40, a Harvard University report published in 2007 said.
Reuters