Barcelona, Spain ? Copito de Nieve, an albino gorilla billed as the world’s only such specimen and a beloved city mascot, is dying of skin cancer.

Since veterinarians broke the bad news last weekend, giving the primate just months to live, people have been filing by his cage to say goodbye.

Copito de Nieve, or Snowflake, is the zoo’s most popular resident, although a grouchy one.

He was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2001 but the disease has progressed suddenly and is no longer controllable, said the zoo’s chief veterinarian, Jesus Fernandez.

“Being albino, he’s very sensitive to the sun. Though we’ve tried our best to protect him this is an incurable, progressive disease, and it will follow its natural course. We don’t know how long he’ll live, but probably not more than a few months,” he said.

Fernandez said not enough studies had been done to know how many albino gorillas might live in the wild. But they are very rare and Copito is the only one known to be alive anywhere today, he said.

At the Diane Fosse Gorilla Fund International headquarters in Atlanta, fund president Claire Richardson said that Copito was in fact the only such gorilla she had heard of.

An albino gorilla called Copito de Nieve, or Snowflake, rests on a rock in the zoo of Barcelona, northeastern Spain. Veterinarians recently said the ape had terminal skin cancer. Snowflake is billed as the world's only such specimen and has been the city's beloved mascot since 1966.

And at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, animal keeper Amy Fuller also said Copito was apparently one of a kind.

Copito is so famous in the international veterinary community that his illness has been a topic of lament for days, Fuller said.

Copito is thought to be between 38 and 40, equivalent to 80 human years. In the wild, gorillas only live to be about 25.

For now, the gorilla appears healthy. City officials are encouraging people to visit Copito, a symbol for Barcelona since he was captured by a hunter in Equatorial Guinea in 1966 and brought here.

In his 37 years at the Barcelona zoo, he has fathered 22 offspring with three females. None is albino.

City officials say such an important part of Barcelona culture shouldn’t be forgotten, and there are plans to name a street after Copito or honor him with a monument.

“When Copito de Nieve is gone, an era of Barcelona will end,” said zoo spokesman Miguel San Llehy.