Berlin's zoo is mourning Ingo the Flamingo

BERLIN

The Berlin Zoo is mourning Ingo the Flamingo, its oldest resident, who died at what is believed to be at least 75 years of age and had lived there since the mid-1950s.

His place of origin is unclear. The zoo announced Ingo's death at an “imposing” age in social media posts on Wednesday. It said that a ring on the bird's leg with the inscription “Cairo, 23.6.1948” indicated what is believed to have been “his minimum age.”

Ingo was, the zoo added, “truly a legend!”

Ingo had lived at the zoo in what was then West Berlin since the summer of 1955, when he arrived from the Tierpark zoo in the divided city's communist east. The inscription on the ring was discovered only a few years ago.

He is believed to have fathered descendants, but detailed records were not kept on young flamingoes, German news agency dpa reported.

Ingo had limped a little recently and sometimes appeared to need a rest from his fellow flamingoes, standing aside from them, but lived well beyond the roughly 30-year average life span of flamingoes in the wild.