Shopping mall fails to release Bangkok's ageing gorilla who could die any moment

Thailand has failed to secure the release of an ageing gorilla that will spend his last days locked up in a grubby mall zoo cage.

Bua Noi (Little Lotus) has spent more than 30 years in a cage at the private Pata zoo, which is on the seventh floor of a Bangkok shopping centre.

Thailand's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment last week said it was planning to buy the female gorilla from the mall owners for 30 million baht (£680,000).

The government agency is also considering a fundraiser to drum up the cash to relocate the ageing ape to Germany, where she was born.

The move would give her the opportunity to spend her last days in a better environment with other gorillas.

Bua Noi was transported from Germany to Thailand for the opening of the store in the 1980s (Daily Mirror)

However, the department store denies she lives in squalor, claiming she has a 20metre-long and 10-metre wide living space and that they spent around 10,000 baht (£228) every month on her care.

“The department store executives turned down a plan to relocate the gorilla as earlier requested by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

"They were not certain that Bua Noi, which has been used to the absence of natural pathogens, could adjust to a new environment,” the company said in a Facebook post on Saturday.

In 2015, an orangutan was another of the zoo's residents (Daily Mirror)

The zoo called her a "cherished animal" and said it was "taking good care of the animal and aware that she could die at any time due to her old age”, according to the Thai Examiner.

There has been much back and forth about Bua Noi's case over the years.

At one point, Thai authorities decided the zoo had broken several laws and ordered the monkey and other large animals to be removed.

The Mirror visited the zoo in 2015 and said it was far below standards (Daily Mirror)

But this never happened and Bua Noi remained locked away in her concrete cage.

Back in 2015, The Mirror visited the zoo and at the time the conditions were horrendous.

The zoo would never be allowed to exist in the UK or any other European country.

Below tens of thousands of cars, lorries and buses thunder past each day on one of Bangkok's busiest streets.

The heat was over-bearing and the exhaust fumes overwhelming.

As well as Bua Noi - there is an orang utan and her baby, a chimpanzee, a black panther, two leopards and four black bears.