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.

"Pattycake" was born on September 3, 1972, to western lowland gorilla parents Lulu and Kongo at the Central Park Zoo. Lulu and Kongo first arrived at the zoo on May 11, 1966. At the time, it was thought that Lulu wasn't mature enough to conceive, so when Lulu gave birth to Pattycake at the age of 8, it came as a surprise. Up until the time Lulu gave birth, it had been very difficult to get captive gorilla mothers to raise their young in zoos because the babies would either be rejected by the mother or they would be taken away by the handlers. Pattycake was the first gorilla successfully born in captivity in New York.

At the time of her birth, it was unknown if she was a male or female, as it was considered too dangerous to approach her and her parents. Her handlers assumed she was a male and originally named her "Sonny Jim". When it was established that Pattycake was a female, a contest was held by the New York Daily News to find her a name. "Patty Cake", the winning entry, was submitted by New York fireman John O'Connor, who named the gorilla after his wife and a proposed daughter. "It just so happens that we have three boys and I told my wife that if we ever have a girl, we should name her Patty, which happens to be her name. I thought we'd let the baby gorilla use the name in the meantime," O'Connor told reporters.

Pattycake's birth caught the attention of the city and brought crowds of thousands of New Yorkers to the Central Park Zoo. Reporter N. R. Kleinfield called her a child star whose "furry face served as a bit of a respite at a time when the city found itself grappling with high crime rates and an intensifying financial crisis." Six months after Pattycake was born, the director of the zoo estimated that based on the crowds, she might draw an additional 500,000 visitors by the time of her first birthday.

At the age of five months, Pattycake was sharing the Lion House with Lulu and Kongo at the Central Park Zoo. On March 20, 1973, an accident occurred that was attributed more to clumsiness than to parenting skills. Although no staff were on hand to see it directly, according to visitors, while little Pattycake was reaching out to her father through the bars of her cage, her right arm became stuck somehow when her mother Lulu pulled her away, breaking her right arm. Zoo handlers had to subdue Lulu with a tranquilizer dart to remove Pattycake and treat her injury. While experts considered the incident an accident, the media sensationalized the event. Zookeeper Veronica Nelson, who worked with Patty Cake, recalled that

The news media would have liked to have it a dramatic bloody mess—a struggle between mom and pop for the custody of the child. It was nothing like that. It was a simple accident. Kongo was in one part of the double cage, Lulu in another, and between them was a partition of narrow bars. Lulu had Patty Cake in her arms and when Patty reached in between the narrow bars to touch her father, Lulu suddenly pulled her away. But Patty's arm got caught in the narrow bars and broke. It was a freak accident. No one ever realized that those bars were narrow enough to catch that tiny arm.