A gorilla giving birth through a rare C-section made headlines last week. Now, its baby is fighting pneumonia at a San Diego zoo, UK MailOnline reported.
After undergoing a successful surgery for a collapsed lung on Friday, the unnamed girl gorilla who was born last Wednesday, fell ill over the weekend.
Upon discovering a collapsed organ during the baby's chest surgery, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park veterinarians performed an emergency surgery.
Born with breathing problems, the gorilla weighed 4.6 lbs. upon her birth on Wednesday, according to UK MailOnline.
"It's not really clear if it [pneumonia] occurred just prior to birth or immediately following birth, but it's definitely pneumonia and a lot of the conditions that we've been managing since then are all related to pneumonia," Nadine Lamberski, veterinarian and associate director of veterinary services at San Diego Zoo, told the LA Times.
A life-saving procedure was done by veterinarians, a neonatal specialist named Dawn Reeves and an anesthesiologist from the University of California, San Diego Health System on Friday morning, reported NBC.
The surgery was deemed successful after it was determined that the baby's lungs were inflated while she was being monitored, NBC reported.
A serious lung infection, however, was contracted by the baby gorilla, UK MailOnline reported.
Since the baby gorilla can grab things with both its hands and feet, it is different than human babies, Reeves told the Telegraph.
"Park officials said that the baby's mother, 18-year-old Imani, went into labor on Wednesday morning and was showing no signs of progress until later that evening," UK MailOnline reported.
With the help of experts in human C-sections, doctors took Imani to the Safari Park veterinary hospital for an emergency operation, NBC reported.
"In retrospect the C-section was the right decision," said the park's Associate Director of Veterinary Services Nadine Lamberski in a release. "We think the health of the fetus would have been compromised if we delayed the surgery any longer."
Any updates on the gorilla's health were not available, UK MailOnline reported.
"This is Imani's first baby gorilla but the park's 17th," UK MailOnline reported.
