Anyone who is great friends with me knows very well that I have a huge passion for animals. All creatures, great and small, are fascinating to me. And every so often, reading an article on the Internet about a feel-good story about a cute baby animal at a local zoo or a study on pet abuse is enough to get me engaged. As of now, what seems like an outrage in society has cluttered my news feed for the past few days.
The shooting and killing of the endangered gorilla, Harambe.
When I heard about the news, of course, I was saddened by the loss of life that a zoo had to forcibly shoot one of their most prized possessions. And pardon my harsh language, but the reasoning is that some mindless mother let her child out of her sight and the child fell into the gorilla enclosure. Long story short, at the Cincinatti Zoo, a child fell into the gorilla enclosure and the 17-year old male, Harambe, went over to the boy and exhibited certain behaviors with the boy.
Making the rounds on the Internet, the entire video of both the child and Harambe has gone viral, and showed surprising footage, especially when the gorilla drags the boy around like a rag doll. Also the gorilla was classified as a Class 1 animal, which in zoo language, is a very dangerous animal, such as tigers, elephants, bears and crocodiles.
My initial thoughts on this whole situation was that why would there be a need to kill such a beautiful creature. Especially one is so rare and so endangered, that only a few thousand exist in our blue planet.
Overall, I am against the shooting of the gorilla.
Yes, a gorilla is truly an impressive and powerful animal, much stronger than humans. Especially the silver back males the protect their families. In the wild, the eldest and biggest male would most likely protect their family from leopards, but in zoos, they most likely have nothing to fear. But family is family, and if we humans act the same, so do they.
The mother of the child is certainly not a monster, but if she claims to have such a watchful eye over her child, then none of this would have happened in the first place. The fact that the enclosure has a four foot gap, a 15 foot moat and another four foot gap to protect both the guests and animals, then how does a child falling into an enclosure not go unnoticed. It feels like nobody is asking the important questions here. What was the mother doing when the boy fell? Did any of the witnesses that saw the child, attempt to save the child before he fell in? It almost feels like that literally, no one was watching what the child was doing. Everyone was most likely on their iPhones playing "Color Switch" or attempting to take an Instagram picture of their morning Starbucks because that is the thing to do nowadays in our culture.
Another reason why I am against the shooting is because of what the gorilla did when he was interacting with the child. Yes, when the gorilla dragged the child around was kind of shocking, but it honestly could have been a lot worse. I am no zoologist or animal expert, but if the gorilla is so dangerous, then why didn't Harambe hurt the child? He could have killed the child, but he didn't.
It's a lot different if people say, "Well, what if this situation involved a tiger or a leopard?" Well yes, that is very different because those are active hunters, and in some underdeveloped parts of the world, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, big cats killing humans are not uncommon. How often do you hear reports of gorillas in the wild killing a human?
