Japanese zoo mourns anime-loving celebrity penguin

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A celebrity penguin, which made international headlines after forming an attachment to a cardboard cut-out in a Japanese zoo, has died at the age of 21.

Tobu Zoo in Japan's central Saitama prefecture announced Grape's death through its Twitter account, saying that the cause of death was unknown. But according to NewsWalker, he would have been around 80-years-old in "human years".

Grape the Humboldt penguin became on online star in May after seemingly falling in love with the picture of Hululu, an anthropomorphic penguin character from the Japanese anime series Kemono Friends, after it was placed in his enclosure, the RocketNews website reports.

He is thought to have become fixated on the cut-out after being jilted by a female penguin called Midori, which had been his mate for a decade.

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