THE Marlon Brando of gorillas was raised right here in Australia but, like all our best stuff, we gave him away.

Shabani the western lowland gorilla has become a national heart-throb in Japan after thousands of young girls went bananas on Twitter about his good looks.

In fact, the new father is considered so handsome that officials have credited him with a massive spike in female visitor numbers to the Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens.

His fans rave about his “ripped muscles”, “brooding poses” “and “flirtatious glances” and someone has put together a vine celebrating Shabani’s version of the Zoolander Magnum.

This morning it has emerged that Shabani spent his childhood at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo, where his charisma apparently went unnoticed for 11 years — ELEVEN YEARS — before we shipped him off in 2007.

As RocketNews24 puts it: “Beauty comes in many different packages and today that package is a gorilla!”