By now I am sure you have heard about the little boy who slipped away from his mother, made it through all the various safeguards, and then toppled down 15 feet into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati zoo. The short version is that once the boy was spotted, the zoo officials called the gorillas to leave the enclosure but one didn’t listen. It appears that he heard the splashing in the moat and went to investigate.
He discovered the play toy that was seemingly dropped from the heavens for him and did what any gorilla with a new toy would do, played with it. Here is where the stories diverge. One group of onlookers say that the gorilla sloshed the boy around in the water (probably to wash off that disgusting human smell) and then dragged him up to the grassy area where he began “violently dragging and throwing the child.” Others say that the gorilla seemed protective but that all the screaming and yelling confused and irritated him.
The stories re-converge at this point, as there is no question that the zoo officials shot and killed the gorilla. The boy was retrieved and taken in for treatment of a concussion and other non-threatening injuries.
Now the controversies begin. First, did they have no other choice but to kill the gorilla? We have the zoo side (and their supporters) saying that they had no other options, they had to save the boy, and to do that required killing the gorilla. The other camp suggests that often times, when a primate has something that they aren’t supposed to have or that zookeepers want to get from them, an offering of a favorite treat or something else unknown and interesting can cause them to abandon the current item for the new shiny thing. People wonder why the zoo didn’t try this method or at least tranquilize the gorilla instead.
The zoo officials (I think word combinations like this should be allowed to be contracted, zoofficials…) say that, unlike the movies, where tranquilizers work instantaneously and oh so gently, in the real world where we actually live, it can take 15-20 minutes for the effects to take hold and that the boy would most likely have not survived being used as a marimba mallet for that long. Plus, if you watched Jurassic World, you saw the outcome of shooting the Indominus Rex with the darts…if you haven’t, let’s just say that she ate well that day. Still, no official response for why they didn’t try the bait and switch method, though it can be inferred that they also thought they didn’t have time to run to the pet store and get a Busy Bee to distract him.
What do I think? I think that unless you or I are zoologists, or Jane Goodall, (which I am neither) we don’t know the true threat this gorilla presented and, if it were our child that Harambe the gorilla was using to sweep his floor, we probably would have shot him (the gorilla…not our boy) ourselves. It is very easy to say you would do something differently when you have no actual stake in the outcome.
So for this part of the controversy, I have to say that while I wish there was another option, I wasn’t there and I don’t know Harambe well enough to read his body language. I have to trust that the people with years of experience know how to handle the situation and that they learned their lesson from the Jurassic World response team.
The other part of the controversy: Should the parent(s) of this child be held responsible? Well, here are the facts as we know them. The child told his mother he wanted to go into the water. The child ended up in the water. What we don’t know is how long it took the boy to get from his mother’s side into the enclosure and how long he was gone before she noticed. What we also don’t know, is how this boy was unaware that he lacked the capacity for flight. Maybe I am being a bit snarky, but this all ties back to personal responsibility. Do children get away from their parents sometimes? Yes, of course…but when you are in an environment like this *and* your child tells you that he wants to go into that water, maybe a little extra attention is required, no? But the boy did go into the enclosure and, 15 foot drop be damned, he was getting in that water. Instead of thinking that maybe, just maybe, Darwin himself was sending us a message about this boy, the powers that be chose him over the gorilla.
I get it, the human race has declared that any human life is more valuable than any animal life. And…we have the guns, so we get to make those kinds of rules. But I ask you to think about this. If I am attacked at home by a tiger, then we need to take out the tiger to end the risk to the group of humans. But, If I go into the jungle and the tiger attacks me, isn’t that its job? Why should we send the hunting party out to take down the rogue tiger with a taste for humans?
These gorillas live in an enclosure that is all theirs, and when something is put in that enclosure, it becomes theirs to do with as they please. All Harambe knew was that something fun was now in his enclosure and therefore, his to play with. He did exactly what he had been trained to do since birth…enjoy the new plaything that was put in his environment.
I am sure it was a difficult choice to make, but it wouldn’t have been necessary if the child had not wandered off. Even if we don’t question the mother’s parenting skills…even if we don’t question the boy’s intellect…if we just declare this an accident, can we still not find the family at fault? If that boy doesn’t go into the enclosure, Harambe is snacking on the finest fruits and hanging out with a couple of female gorillas today. Shouldn’t the family therefore be responsible for costs incurred to rescue the boy (if this were some other rescue effort, they would be billed for helicopters, ambulances, etc…) and then costs to replace Harambe? I submit that they should.
Above the Nonsense 