We are told that the original Guy arrived at the zoo as a baby on Guy Fawkes night in 1947 and lived there until his death in 1978, and it is surely a testament to Guy's achievements in gorilla-ing that this huge black marble statue of him was commissioned when he had not yet reached the age of 16, and that a bronze, sculpted by William Timyn, can also be found at ZSL London Zoo’s Barclay Court, erected after his death.
For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_the_Gorilla
I saw Guy a couple of times prior to his death, and a few times afterwards (he was stuffed and displayed at the Natural History Museum).
ReplyDeleteOne the zookeepers told me that they had to put in a plexiglass window on his cage because when he was younger, he would run up to the bars and spit at the audience.