What is "pattycake"

n. (context games English) A children's game in which two people alternately clap their own and each other's hands.

Pattycake, also known as Patty Cake (September 3, 1972 – March 31, 2013) was a female western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) born to Lulu and Kongo at the Central Park Zoo in New York City. She was the first baby gorilla successfully born in captivity in New York. Months after her much publicized birth, Pattycake's arm was broken when it got stuck in her cage as her mother grabbed her away from her father. The incident was sensationally anthropomorphized in the media as a domestic dispute between Lulu and Kongo, but in reality experts thought it was a simple accident.

Her injury was treated at the Bronx Zoo while a custody dispute between the two zoos broke out in public and elicited a range of opinions from experts who believed Pattycake should be returned to her mother. Intense media coverage and public interest brought Pattycake to the attention of a wide audience, with stories focusing on her recovery, her eventual reunion with her parents, and the conditions of zoo animals in Central Park. An ambitious proposal for renovating the Central Park Zoo arose in the wake of the controversy while the zoo received record attendance rates.

Pattycake was the "child star" of New York City in the early 1970s, and her fame was compared to Shirley Temple. At a time when New York City was facing many problems, she distracted the public from their growing anxieties and became a welcome relief for New Yorkers and their children who loved to visit her. After spending the first decade of her life at the Central Park Zoo, Pattycake moved permanently to the Bronx Zoo in 1982. She was the mother of ten baby gorillas, including twins born in 1995. Pattycake spent her later life as an independent but caring troop matriarch in the Bronx Zoo's Congo Gorilla Forest exhibit. After suffering from arthritis and cardiac problems for some time, Pattycake succumbed to heart disease in 2013.