In fact, both Bushman and Sinbad had broken out of their cages into the keepers' area of the old ape house. And we've had lions loose in the Lion House.' An old polar bear, Bea, walked out of her habitat on an ice bridge. An elephant once broke out in 1892 and smashed up a nearby bar before having its legs roped and tied to a tree by keepers.įisher told the Tribune upon his retirement: 'We've had chimps run down Cannon Drive. Lincoln Park Zoo animal escapes are the stuff of legend, although the most colorful tales go back to the zoo's formative days in the 19th and early 20th century, when sea lions broke out and went flopping down Clark Street, or bears got free and roamed the zoo. As Sinbad was then old and comparatively feeble, Fisher wasn't too alarmed and went to investigate. Zoo Director Lester Fisher, also a beloved and popular figure from his days making regular appearances on WGN-TV Channel 9's 'Ray Rayner and Friends' morning show, thought at first it was Sinbad who'd broken out.

Otto in the old Lincoln Park Zoo Primate House in a shot taken from 'Otto: Zoo Gorilla.'Īccording to ' The Ark in the Park,' a zoo history written by former Curator of Mammals Mark Rosenthal, Otto was spotted strolling the grounds, on his way back to the old Primate House, and an alert went out. He somehow scaled an 11-foot glass wall that previously had been considered the standard for a safe height for gorilla enclosures and eluded two electrical wires to go on what was estimated by some to be a half-hour constitutional.

This being before the age of surveillance cameras - at least where most zoo exhibits are concerned - it's not known how Otto broke out of the outdoor enclosure at the Great Ape House about 9 a.m. While not as beloved as Bushman, and not as impressive a specimen, at about 450 pounds, Otto was still the longtime head of the Lincoln Park Zoo troop, and he endeared himself to Chicagoans as the star of a 1977 PBS documentary, 'Otto: Zoo Gorilla,' about his move into the new digs, but most of all with his escape five years later on the morning of July 27, 1982. Otto Kerner (the first in a series of recent Illinois governors to go on to do time in prison). He had been a gift to the zoo from the African nation of Cameroon in the mid-'60s, and had been named after Gov. At a time when breeding gorillas in captivity was still a difficult operation, Lincoln Park Zoo developed one of the first and most successful gorilla breeding programs, with Otto siring 11 gorillas (that we know of). īushman was succeeded by Sinbad, an ornery old cuss later labeled a 'wife beater.' When the zoo opened its new Great Ape House in 1976, Sinbad was considered so set in his ways and rancorous that he remained in the old Primate House in the cage previously occupied by Bushman and didn't make the move with the rest of the troop, eventually dying in 1985. His greatest predecessor, Bushman, was such a marvelous specimen, at 6 feet-plus and 550 pounds, and he was so beloved by Chicagoans, that upon his death in 1951 he was preserved and stuffed, and he remains on display today at the Field Museum, albeit somewhat hidden away on the ground floor.īushman, stuffed and on display at the Field Museum. Otto was the latest in a long line of great apes at the zoo.

Documentary gorilla image