If you ever lost me in a zoo, the first place I would tell you to look would be the monkey exhibit. In fact, you would probably find my whole family, pressed against the glass, gazing at the various monkey species in their natural habitat. Maybe its their strong resemblance to humans, or the way they interact with each other, that really attracts us to these creatures. When I first heard about the tragic Cincinnati Zoo incident that involved a 400-pound gorilla being shot, despite its efforts to protect a boy that had fallen into its cage, my heart sunk into my chest. I read article after article trying to make some sense of how an incident like this can happen with all of the precautions we take nowadays to preserve the endangered specie's that remain throughout the world. Though I'm just beginning to see both sides of it, I couldn't help but voice my opinion on such a intriguing topic at a time like this, especially being that these creatures are some of my favorite.

As many people know, a family with a 3-year-old toddler was visiting the Cincinnati Zoo on what seemed to be like a fun Memorial Day outing. I'm sure the zoo had been a bustling place on this weekend, in particular, as many families enjoy heading to a relaxing and seemingly safe environment on long holiday weekends. When the young boys family got to the gorilla exhibit, where Harambe and two other female gorillas resided, the boy urged his mom to let him go in and play with the gorillas in the exhibit, according to many witnesses. Like any mother would, she told him no, and went on about doing her own thing. Before she could realize it, the boy had maneuvered his small body past the "fence" and had fallen down into the moat where the gorilla lived. The next 10 minutes resulted in a mixture of fear, sadness, uproar, and guilt as hundreds of bystanders watched the result of a 100 percent avoidable mishap turn into an endangered species being killed as the result of human carelessness.

There are two sides to this story that everyone is well-aware of. The first is that this was the direct result of a mother failing to pay attention to her very young child, that definitely required full attention as a 3-year-old toddler who could clearly not make rational decisions on his own. The second is that the mother made a mistake, looked away, and in the blink of an eye, a rare and unfortunate outcome resulted. Though I want to believe the latter -- I can't help but believe that the first was more likely the cause.

It's remarkable how many zoos prioritize the concept of keeping animals inside their cages, but never really consider a human being not staying on their side of the barrier. There have been articles pointing out that this might have been the zoos fault, for not having a better security system in play, but in reality its our responsibility to make sure we are simply observing and not overstepping our boundaries. As humans, we should understand that when we enter a zoo, it's our duty to make sure we are there to learn and enjoy observing these animals, but never to put the animals at risk because we are too careless to follow the rules.

Though I'm not a mom, and truly have no idea how hard it is to deal with young children, I do think at some point you need to take full responsibility for your children's actions, as that is a direct result of how you've raised them. Was the mom looking at her phone? Was she trying to take a Snapchat? Was she Instagramming a picture from that day? When our hands are glued to our phones and our social media accounts 24/7, we often forget about what's going on right in front of our eyes. All it takes is a little attention and guidance to explain to a young child the dangers of going in a cage with such a powerful animal and the impacts this could have on not only him, but the animal as well.

I'm not hear to point fingers, because truly I do feel bad for this mother. But I'm also not hear to say that this completely wasn't her fault and she should not feel any sort of guilt. At the end of the day this incident should be targeted at how avoidable this could have been and how an endangered species did not need to be killed due to something as silly as this. It's important that we shed light on not letting this happen again by educating our families and children on how rare and special this species truly is.