Depressing zoo scenes

Without question silverback gorilla, Willie B. was the most famous animal living at the Grant Park Zoo for many years. According to famed Atlanta historian Franklin Garrett, "in 1959 the city built a $400,000 primate house at the Atlanta Zoo. One of it's inhabitants was a baby gorilla, bought by the city for $4,500 and promptly called Willie B (named for Mayor William Berry Hartsfield). The mayor, with his fine flair for publicity, knew that Willie B.'s appeal to the general public would to a degree overcome the criticism heaped upon him by his political opponents for spending so much money housing monkeys. The zoo also acquired new gibbons, baboons, and other primates."

It's hard to imagine how this spending, considered so lavish at the time, could have resulted in such appalling living conditions. Until the 1980s when the zoo developed an outside area for the primates, they were permanently stuck indoors. Willie spent over 20 years stuck in a room like this, with only a tire swing and a TV to help him combat boredom.