Gus, the famous polar bear at New York City's Central Park Zoo polar bear died Tuesday.
Jim Breheny, general director for zoos and aquariums for the Wildlife Conservation Society told The New York Times the bear was a special one.
"He was the iconic image for Central Park," he said. "Some of my favorite images were seeing Gus in his exhibit with the New York cityscape behind him. It was surreal."
Before his death at 27, Gus recently began to have a loss of an appetite, and difficulty when he chewed.
While veterinarians at the zoo were optimistic that it was just a bad toothache, they found it was a large tumor in his thyroid region after an examination on Tuesday. Veterinarians realized they could not operate on the growth, so they gave him an euthanasia injection.
Gus had a mental and emotional disorder called neurosis The Times reported. The bear began swimming for as many as 12 hours a day seven days a week in his zoo habitat. Zoo visitors began to notice this and Gus was given therapy to help him with his disorder which therefore led to him becoming well-known throughout the world.
At the time Gus's behavior began, Dr. William Conway, who served as the society's the general director told The Times Gus's behavior was suspicious .
"It's too repetitive," he said when Gus began swimming for extended periods. "The first thing you worry about is whether this reflects some deep-seated physical problem. Is he losing weight? Is his appetite off? Is his behavior toward the ladies he's living with declining?"
Gus had two companions in Ida, who passed away from liver disease at age 25 two years ago, and Lily who passed away in 2004 at age 17 after medical staff noticed an abdominal mass The Times reported.
Things began to improve for Gus following an enrichment program to make him more active..
In a matter of months, the repetitive swimming began to taper off. It never ceased entirely.
"Even at the end it happened sometimes," Breheny told The Times. "But not to the point where we thought it was a problem."
A necropsy will be done on Gus, and then the bear will be cremated.
