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What to do with an aged lemur?

Even as a youngster, Rollie looked older and wiser than his years. His white mustache sprouted longer by the month, until it flamed from his cheeks like a German kaiser's.

In the past few years, though, the tribulations of age - not just the appearance of it - have begun catching up with Rollie.

The tiny monkey, used to crunching away on raw sweet potato and celery, has surrendered all but six of his 32 teeth to the toll of time.

At 17, Rollie - a resident of Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo - is a senior citizen of his species. In the wilds of the Amazon, his keepers say, he almost certainly would never have made it this long.

In captivity, he's got plenty of company.

The golden years have arrived at the nation's zoos and aquariums, and that is taking veterinarians and keepers, along with their animals, into a zone of unknowns.

Do female gorillas, now frequently living in to their 40s and 50s, experience menopause?

Can an aging lemur suffer from dementia?

How should veterinarians treat aging lions afflicted with what Mary Joa n Pugh, the North Carolina Zoo's chief of staff and business officer, called "some sort of feline HIV"?

All of those questions hang on a larger one that, until recent years, has been left to educated guesswork based on limited evidence.

"How old is geriatric? How old do animals really live?" says Sharon Dewar, a spokeswoman for the Lincoln Park Zoo, whose keepers have adjusted to Rollie's toothlessness by serving him a diet of soft-cooked veggies.

But zoos, which have pooled information on animal births and genealogy since the 1970s, are drawing some early conclusions. For example, records show that the median age of Siberian tigers living in zoos in the two decades ending in 1990 was a little over 11 years old. Since then, however, the median age of those tigers has topped 15 years old.

The N.C. Zoo in Asheboro houses 30-year-old giraffes, which Pugh said could be the oldest of their species in the country.

Without predators, and with treatment for disease, animals are far outliving their wild counterparts.

But old age subjects animals to wear and tear and changes in physiology that they would never have known otherwise. And the N.C. Zoo's Pugh said zoos recognize they must prepare to care longer for aging and dying animals.

"If you've had a dog or cat, it's not going to live with you forever," she said. "You have to know that and plan for it. We spend time thinking about these things and how we might maintain them."

The General Assembly recently approved giving the N.C. Zoo $2.7 million to modify and expand its polar bear exhibit and holding area. The lone polar bear now is about 20 years old, but Pugh said the zoo hopes to bring in additional bears.

"That's what you have to do, you have to modify your holding areas," she said. "You don't just wait until the older ones die and then bring in a new one. That's just part of the zoo business."