Over the Memorial Day weekend, a four year-old boy climbed over a barrier and fell into a gorillaexhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo. The episode ended with Harambe, a male lowland gorilla, shot dead by the zoo’s dangerous animal response team. Harambe was part of the zoo’s captive breeding program for the critically-endangered Western lowland gorilla.
Eyewitness video initially shows Harambe standing over the boy and holding his hand. It looks as though he is genuinely trying to protect and possibly soothe him. But the same video shows the 450-pound silver back grabbing the child by the leg and dragging him rather violently through a water-filled moat. Despite this rough treatment, the boy seems to have walked away from the incident with few injuries.
Predictably, Harambe’s death provoked outrage, with some blaming the parents of the boy for not keeping better tabs on him. To date, nearly half a million people have signed an online petition calling for the Cincinnati Zoo, Hamilton County Child Protection Services, and Cincinnati Police Department to hold the parents responsible. The petition reads in part:
“This beautiful gorilla lost his life because the boy’s parents did not keep a closer watch on the child. We the undersigned believe that the child would not have been able to enter the enclosure under proper parental supervision. Witnesses claim that they heard the child state that he wished to go into the enclosure and was actively trying to breach the barriers. This should have prompted the parents to immediately remove the child from the vicinity.”
Others have blamed the zoo for negligence in the exhibit’s design, or criticized the zoo for shooting the gorilla instead tranquilizing him. Ian Redmond, chairman of the UK-based conservation charity the Gorilla Organisation, told The Guardian:
”Was a lethal shot the only option? No, I don’t think so. Were other options tried? You could have offered the gorilla more fruit than he could ever normally imagine in one sitting and then the boy would have become less interesting to him. It seemed like no one was prepared to go into the enclosure.”
In a press conference, Cincinnati Zoo director Thane Maynard defended the zoo’s action:
“We did not take the shooting of Harambe lightly, but that child’s life was in danger. And people who question that, or are Monday morning quarter backs, or second guessers ,don’t understand that you can’t take a chance with a silver back gorilla. They’re three times bigger than a man, six times stronger. It’s a dangerous animal…We’re talking about an animal that I’ve seen with one hand, take a coconut and crush it.”
He added that:
“Looking back, we would make the same decision. The gorilla was clearly agitated. The gorilla was clearly disoriented.”
Jane Goodall | Credit: JaneGoodall.org
As the dust settles, several world-renowned animal experts have weighed in. In a open letterto zoo director Maynard, primatologist Jane Goodall writes:
“I feel so sorry for you, having to try to defend something which you may well disapprove of. It looked as though the gorilla was putting an arm round the child — like the female who rescued and returned the child from the Chicago exhibit.”
Goodall refers to a similar incident in 1996 when a female gorilla protected a toddler who had fallen into an exhibit and hand-delivered him to paramedics.
