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Post has been Killed

Careless Family Leads to Death of Gorilla - Cincinnati Zoo

submitted by Mordhaus

8 years 4 weeks ago

Careless parenting may have led to the death of Harambe, a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla killed on Saturday to save a boy who slipped into the zoo's habitat.

The boy was in "imminent danger," leaving the zoo's Dangerous Animal Response Team with no option but to shoot the 450-pound gorilla, zoo director Thane Maynard said in a statement on Facebook. Tranquilizers may not have taken effect in time to save the boy while the dart might have agitated the animal, worsening the situation, Maynard said.

"We are heartbroken about losing Harambe, but a child's life was in danger and a quick decision had to be made," he said.

The words did little to assuage an angry chorus of critics who believed the gorilla's death was unnecessary. Many blamed the boy's mother for failing to look after her son. Neither the boy nor his family have been identified.

4 Comments

So sad.
It's really hard to upvote this, even though it is news with a social message.

From what I've seen about this, there's plenty of blame to go around. Apparently there was only one fence between people and the enclosure, apparently with a hole big enough for a 4 year old or short enough for one to climb over....then there was the 4 year old that was unwatched long enough to get through/over that fence. Once he was in the enclosure in the hands of the Gorilla, they had little choice, sadly. If they tranquilized it and it hurt or killed the boy before going out, the zoo would be sued and close and the keepers likely be charged with some kind of manslaughter by negligence.

*kill

Permanently discarding this video - kill requested by Mordhaus.

I have found it interesting that, with all the blame being thrown around recently at the mother and the zoo, no one has mentioned the crowd's culpability in this tragedy.

The people in the crowd getting excited, screaming, shouting, pointing, rushing about, etc. only served to get the gorilla overly excited and aggravate the situation. It really seemed to me that the gorilla was trying to help and move the boy away from all the excitement, not hurt him (clear to me because he didn't just smash, if he wanted to hurt the boy, he would have in a nanosecond).
Had people remained calm, things may have ended quite differently...but that would require some self control, something in short supply today....and this is the consequence.

I also can't understand why, since they already had the rifle there in case it went wrong, they didn't at least TRY to tranquilize him and see if it worked, then take the ultimate action if he seemed to be reacting badly.

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