{"id":287958,"date":"2016-12-31T14:31:53","date_gmt":"2016-12-31T13:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/2016-strikes-again-philly-zoo-euthanizes-25yo-lioness-for-being-too-old-inactive\/"},"modified":"2016-12-31T14:31:53","modified_gmt":"2016-12-31T13:31:53","slug":"2016-strikes-again-philly-zoo-euthanizes-25yo-lioness-for-being-too-old-inactive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/2016-strikes-again-philly-zoo-euthanizes-25yo-lioness-for-being-too-old-inactive\/","title":{"rendered":"\u20182016 strikes again\u2019: Philly zoo euthanizes 25yo lioness for being too old &amp; inactive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.12\/thumbnail\/58677eb3c46188f54b8b45ed.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>        As if our favorite movie and music stars weren\u2019t enough, 2016 has managed to cram another death into its busy schedule \u2013 that of America\u2019s oldest African lion, 25-year-old Zenda, who was euthanized in the Philadelphia Zoo.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/suQ1_zbgDV0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cPhiladelphia Zoo announced today that Zenda, a 25-year-old female African lion, was euthanized on Thursday, December 29th due to an acute decline in her mobility and behavior,\u201d the Philadelphia Zoo <a href=\"http:\/\/philadelphiazoo.org\/About-The-Zoo\/Pressroom\/Press-Releases\/Zenda,-Philadelphia-Zoo-s-25-year-old-Female-Afric.htm\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a>\u00a0in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Zenda was the oldest African lion in captivity in the US, the zoo\u2019s statement said, adding that she had exceeded<em> \u201cthe 17-year typical life expectancy for lions in zoos.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThis remarkable cat will be missed by staff and guests alike, particularly by the keepers who catered to her changing needs as she grew old,\u201d<\/em> said Dr. Andy Baker, Chief Operating Officer at the Philadelphia Zoo.<\/p>\n<p>Zenda was born in 1991 at the Johannesburg Zoo in South Africa and she arrived at the Philadelphia Zoo in 1993 at the age of 2.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cDuring her many years in Philadelphia, Zenda was one of the Zoo\u2019s most loved and most popular animals,\u201d<\/em> the zoo said.<\/p>\n<p>Zenda played a major role in the zoo\u2019s innovations and took part in the opening of the Big Cat Falls exhibit in 2006.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cDespite their already advancing age, Zenda and her pridemates were eager explorers of the habitat time-share system allowed by the design of Big Cat Falls when we opened it in 2006. Their engagement was one of the inspirations for our pioneering Zoo-wide trail system concept,\u201d<\/em> Baker added.<\/p>\n<p>People turned to social media to mourn the death of the beloved lioness, writing posts saying <em>\u201cRIP Zenda,\u201d<\/em><em>\u201cThanks for all the fun times,\u201d and \u201cShe never knew freedom. I hope she has it now.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Others took the opportunity to once again slam <em>\u201cdeadly 2016,\u201d<\/em> a year which took away many celebrities, including Carrie Fisher, George Michael, David Bowie, Muhammad Ali, Prince, Alan Rickman, and Leonard Cohen. And, in a last gasp, 2016 took Zenda the lioness from them as well, twitterites said.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/viral\/371981-celebrity-deaths-2016-twitter\/\" target=\"_blank\">READ MORE: \u2018Dear 2016, f*** you!\u2019 Social media reacts angrily to string of celebrity deaths<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201c2016 strikes again. RIP Zenda,\u201d<\/em><em>\u201cNo one was safe in 2016, not even Zenda, the oldest African lion in US,\u201d \u201c2016 claims another,\u201d<\/em> they tweeted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/372354-zoo-euthanizes-lion-zenda\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As if our favorite movie and music stars weren\u2019t enough, 2016 has managed to cram another death into its busy schedule \u2013 that of America\u2019s oldest African lion, 25-year-old Zenda, who was euthanized in the Philadelphia Zoo. \u201cPhiladelphia Zoo announced today that Zenda, a 25-year-old female African lion, was euthanized on Thursday, December 29th due [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":287959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-287958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}