Visitors at the Como Zoo will no longer be welcomed by a familiar, large orange primate with beady eyes.

The oldest animal resident at the St. Paul zoo, an orangutan named Amanda, was euthanized at the age of 46 years, said Megan Elder, Como Zoo primate zookeeper.

"She touched so many people," said Elder, who had worked with Amanda for 20 years. "She's always been here. We're going to be grieving forever."

A longtime favorite of guests, she showed keen interest in humans, especially when they would come up to the glass barrier and show her things from their pockets.

"She was very engaging and interested in people and with the keepers, she always wanted them to spend time with them," Elder said. "She was very focused on humans and what they had and what they were doing."

In honor of her long life, Mayor Melvin Carter declared Dec. 19, 2022, Amanda the Orangutan Day in St. Paul.

Amanda was a hybrid orangutan, meaning she was born from interbreeding between any of the three orangutan species, Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli. Because a hybrid wouldn't be found in the wild, zoo staff decided that Amanda shouldn't have offspring.

To her fellow primates in the orangutan exhibit, she became like a much-loved aunt.

"That was the best situation for her," Elder said. "She got to be a mom and role model on her own terms."

When she arrived to the Como Zoo, at the age of 3 from Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, she took care of a baby orangutan whose mother had rejected it.

"She came here to be his buddy, she was always a role model for all the other three orangutans we have here," Elder said.

She was euthanized on Saturday after a team of specialists from the University of Minnesota and zoo staff discovered why she'd been lethargic, uninterested in food and showing signs of discomfort. She had a mass, too large to remove, that had caused chronic damage to her kidneys.

The median life expectancy for orangutans is 28 years, In zoos, however, orangutans are living to their 40s and 50s because zoo medicine, including geriatric care, is improving. Orangutans, a critically endangered specie, belong to the family Hominidae, which includes all four great apes: gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans.

In the day leading up to her death, Amanda was reunited with some of her old zookeepers.

"We spent that last day with Amanda, just spoiling her giving her everything she loved," Elder said. "She really relished in attention "