 In March 2014, the zoo made headlines when a giraffe licked a former zoo cleaner whose last wish was to revisit the zoo, as he was dying of terminal brain cancer.The video went viral worldwide quickly.Diergaarde Blijdorp participates in about 70 breeding programs and studbooks, and coordinates a number of these, including the international breeding program for red pandas, EEPs for Asian elephant, Komodo dragon, red-crowned and Siberian crane, Visayan warty pig and Egyptian tortoise, and the ESB (European Studbook) for the crowned pigeons.