As some of you may know, in Cincinnati, a zoo gorilla was shot dead after a four year old boy climbed into his enclosure. The boy climbed into the barrier and then fell through the moat, where he was grabbed, and dragged around by the gorilla, until the zoo decided to take action and shoot the 400lbs (180kg) gorilla dead.
When incidents like this happen, zoo directors have no other option but to shoot an animal if they endanger lives this is because tranquilizers do not normally take affect until several minutes after the animal in question has been shot. This angered some animal lovers claiming that the gorilla was just confused about the whole situation, and did not mean any harm, which, I agree with.
The fact of the matter is, the boy would never have fallen in the enclosure if his parents were looking after him like they were supposed to be, so some people would blame the parents for being so reckless in the first place.
The mother of the boy who fell into the enclosure has lashed out at critics on Facebook, claiming that, ‘accidents happen’, which, in my opinion no way justifies the killing of an innocent, confused animal. Some animal lovers even went on to say that she should’ve been shot and killed herself instead of Harambe–this I do not agree with since it is counterproductive and morally wrong.
Harambe had lost his life because the parents of the boy didn’t keep a closer watch on him, I believe that the child would not have been able to enter the enclosure if he was being watched properly, as he should have been.
Some eyewitnesses say that Harambe was trying to protect the little boy, but the noise and distress of everyone else around him and made him confused and therefore he may have began to drag the boy away to safety, so he wasn’t intentionally causing the boy any harm.
Harambe was a western lowland gorilla, which are critically endangered in the wild, with numbers currently estimated just under 175,000, only 765 of these gorillas are kept in captivity around the world, so therefore, protecting them should be the main concern for any zoo. A full investigation is being launched into how safe Harambe’s enclosure was, hopefully this will result in some kind of justice for the gentle giant.
Although the incident was the first of its kind in this particular zoo, many other incidents have occurred all around the world, but with very different endings.
In 1998, a five year old boy had fallen into the gorilla enclosure, in the Jersey Zoo, UK he was bleeding when Jambo, the gorilla, came up to the boy and stroked his head, before the boy started crying, Jambo, being obviuosly startled, fled in another direction, leaving the zoo keepers to come in and save the boy. This incident shows us that not all gorillas react the same way to trauma such as this, so therefore each individual case is different, this means that Harambe’s case could’ve been handled a lot better if the proper care and consideration was taken into account.
Finally, the loss of an animal, such as Harambe is a struggle for anyone to deal with, especially one that is well documented. The fact that the boy was not being looked after properly suggests negligence on the parents behalf, causing the loss of an endangered animal, if only Harambe knew, it wasn’t his fault.
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