Cincinnati Zoo Gorilla Euthanized to Save Child.

Parent Cafe
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From CBS New York:

"CBS2’s Andrea Grymes reported cellphone video showed the gorilla seemingly protecting the little boy until he grabs the little boy’s leg and drags him through the water.

Kim O’Connor, who shot the video, said she saw the boy and his mom before he climbed through the public barrier at the zoo.

“I heard the exchange while I’m waiting. ‘I’m going to go in.’ ‘No, you’re not.’ ‘I’m going to go in.’ ‘No, you’re not.’ The mother turns around to her other children,” O’Connor said."

After the boy entered the exhibit he began splashing around in the water which alerted Harambe and he climbed down the ladder to the water.

Harambe had been at the zoo less than a year. The keepers called to the other two gorillas and they moved away from the boy. I agree that the actions of the people in the exhibit incited the gorilla and further agitated him.

Most zoos have high pressure hoses in the exhibits in case they need to separate animals during an altercation. I wonder why they didn’t try that first?

The mother posted on her Facebook account, “accidents happen”

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What effect would a high pressure hose have on a small child? What if it agitated the animal even more?

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A few years back an administrator in the vicinity of the cincy zoo, left her kid in the car and the child died. We are all familar with the Tamir Rice case when a 12 year old in Ohio was playing with a toy gun and shot dead, yet there is more outrage over this animal being shot than those two cases. smdh

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I was bothered that the initial reports made it seem like the gorilla was violent and throwing the child around, who was thus seriously injured. Then it transpires that the gorilla didn’t do very much, and the child was discharged from hospital the same day.

I agree that a high pressure hose might teach the child to behave better in future.

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With all due respect, @partyof5, it does not seem that this situation, which is a fresh news story, is engendering “more outrage” than the Tamir Rice case (btw the family just got a $6 million settlement) or a child left in a hot car case, which, sadly, happens more often than we want to think. The zoo case is (a) new and (b) comparatively less frequent an occurrence. Of course that does not make it any better , as all are tragedies, but this case will likely quiet down in a few days the way the dentist shooting the lion in Africa did. Its just today’s news in a relatively slow news week.

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I was just thinking something similar, jym. There was lots of outrage over the Tamir Rice case.

Thinking about the barrier alh described, it sounds like many of the enclosure barriers in older zoos. I recall kids standing on rungs of fences to better see bears, tigers, etc in my zoo-going days. It would have been fairly easy to go over and into the animal areas. There has always been an expectation that parents would control their kids. My sister had my niece on a leash many places in her younger years, especially out west at the national parks.

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In this case the barrier was 3-4 feet behind the drop down into the enclosure. The kid went over, crawled to the edge and went down. Quite deliberate on his part and it happened very fast. He had a concussion.

It didn’t help that the mother made a statement thanking God that her boy wasn’t more seriously hurt and not expressing any remorse over the death of the gorilla.

It also doesn’t help that she is being blamed when the Dad was also there!

This reminds me of a case where a child died at the Grand Canyon. Kid doesn’t want to hold Mom’s hand, Mom says you must, kid pulls away and runs. Slips under the barrier and falls too far to survive. I suppose that one is Mom’s fault too.

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This particular ape was there to help breed.

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I don’t think great apes should be on display at zoos. If they’re there to breed, it doesn’t have to be in the public eye (and would work better if it wasn’t!).

When we lived near DC, we would go to the National Zoo a lot but only went into the primate house once. It was just so sad and so clear that they don’t belong there. There is a full glass divider because angry and depressed gorillas have been known to throw their poop at people. Much more fun to visit the small mammal house!

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IDK, I have to admit I enjoyed going to the zoo growing up and am not about to deny easy opportunities for kids to see animals up close. We EAT animals. We keep pets. Our outrage for keeping animals in the zoo seems inconsistent. I don’t blame the parent but it does look like the kid gave enough warnings to his mom that he was going in. He probably gets into a lot of things outside of the zoo that his mom could have taken it seriously.

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Most zoos have moved away from cages and such, at the Bronx Zoo the animals are in enclosures that mimic natural habitats, and most of the parks emphasize conservation. Given that Gorillas in the wild are being wiped out due to poaching and encroachment by human beings, these kind of parks may be the last hope for these animals, both as places to keep the species going and also maybe, just maybe, put it into people’s consciousness that animals are being wiped out, either through greed or contention with human populations and war. Groups like the NY Zoological society that runs the Bronx Zoo are also heavily invested in conservation work in the wild…so it isn’t quite gerbils in a cage (though sadly there are a lot of zoos still like that).

As far as shooting the Gorilla, I think that as sad as it is, they did the right thing. It isn’t that Gorillas are vicious animals (they aren’t per se), it is they still are wild animals that can get sad and frightened, when this happened you had a bunch of people yelling and screaming, and the Gorilla is going to react to that. It probably was acting to try and protect the child, but animals when panicked, even intelligent animals like Gorillas, can react irrationally if they become afraid or upset, they can hurt their own children when threatened. In a split second, not meaning to, if the animal gets agitated or upset, it could literally throw the child or accidentally hurt it trying to bring it to safety, gorilla young are a lot stronger than human children, what is normal handling for a Gorilla could kill a human child. Those saying “well, why didn’t they just tranqulize it” are like those who scream after a police shooting, when they kill an armed person “why don’t you just shoot the gun out of his hand”, it is based on myth created in movies.With a tranquilizer dart with a 450 pound animal that is agitated, it could take a while for it to work, it isn’t like in a movie where they shoot and the animal falls over, and if they put enough in the dart to knock it out rapidly, it might end up killing the gorilla in the end…but the real reason is that it doens’t work like on tv or the movies. They had to make a quick decision, and given you had a crowd of people yelling and screaming, the animal could end up killing the kid at any moment.

You can see the fence below, it wasn’t some ancient Iron fence with huge gaps, it routinely was inspected by the FDA and the AZA (the certification group for zoological parks) and was found to be within guidelines. I am sure the family will sue, figuring this is a win win for them (the mom was quoted as saying “accidents will happen”, until some gem of a laywer like you see advertising on daytime tv ‘convinces them’ they can make millions), despite the mom saying “accidents happen”, I wonder how forgiving she will be with the specter of $$$$ in their eyes?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwimhu-zu4TNAhVEKCYKHdrhAAsQjRwIBw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fnews%2Fcomments%2F4licqq%2Fcincinnati_zoo_kills_gorilla_to_protect_small%2F&psig=AFQjCNEs1GMmI48qKkqmb9XaB_A6DhQmKA&ust=1464789261112521

There is some confusion about how the kid got into the enclosure, some say he went under it, others say he climbed over it. What I wonder if it sounds like the zoo was crowded, didn’t anyone see the kid climbing on the fence, or trying to go over it? It looks like it would take time to get under/over it, so how come no one else noticed?

I am glad the kid is okay, young kids are young kids, and I am truly sorry the Gorilla is dead, but I don’t think they had much choice but to shoot it. I have heard people saying the zoo should have had a clear plexiglass wall around the enclusure, they should have had X, Y and Z, but with exhibits like this it is a matter of balancing safety with the experience of going there. Putting up huge plexiglass walls might sound ideal, but over time they become clouded, and it also kind of makes it like a cage again, and the reality is this fence has been in place since 1978 and this hasn’t happened before, and this is a zoo I suspect gets a lot of visitors. I am sure a lawyer will argue that any accident shows negligence, but is it negligent if one kid manages to evade the security, after almost 40 years of heavy crowds? Not to mention that if the fence met the standards of the FDA and the AZA, it is like trying to sue a carmaker that their safety features were deficient, if it met federal regulations and was otherwise not defective. The only way they should be able to win a lawsuit in this case IMO should be to show that the fence was in bad repair and the zoo should have known it, which would be negligence, at least as they laid it out to us when I have been on civil juries.

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Darwin would be disappointed in the zoos actions.

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Once the child was in the enclosure in very close proximity to the gorilla, the zoo had no choice but to shoot the gorilla.

I can’t even bear to think of what could have happened to that little boy.

Does anyone remember the woman whose friend’s chimp ripped off her face? :frowning:

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She was just featured in an update on one of the news shows (20/20 or one of those) @SouthFloridaMom9

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Why? Because the fittest didn’t survive in this case? :slight_smile:

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I remember when zoos really were cages for the animals. It was really terrible and sad. But now, the enclosures are huge, well designed and humane. I recently have had the good fortune of visiting the country’s two best zoos, St. Louis and San Diego. In both zoos, the gorilla habitat is large and has a high and low viewing area. The high area is the fence and moat and the low area is a high glass wall.

I also had the opportunity to talk extensively about great apes with experienced zoo volunteers. Apes are no longer captured in the wild. All the apes we see in zoos today have been bred from other zoos or other animal ‘attractions’. The zoos move the animals around for breeding to prevent in-breeding.

Animal rights activists should focus not on zoos but on the over-population in countries with great ape populations and the resulting de-forestation that destroys their habitat. Zoos are trying to preserve species. And seeing the animals in zoos makes people aware of what magnificient animals they are. If they were not seen, their plight in the wild might be forgotten.

As for these parents, PARENTS, (not just the mom), there should be some penalty for lack of control and supervision of the child that resulted in this gorilla’s death.

When the dumb tourists put a baby bison in their van in Yellowstone recently, an act which resulted in that baby’s euthanization, the tourists received a fine. It was paltry, $100-$500, but it was something. And it received headlines and may have deterred such stupidity in the future.

I think a fine on these parents is appropriate.

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A million years ago I took a tort law class, and though I don’t remember much, I am remembering the concept of attractive nuisance, especially with regard to children and water. So I wonder if any lawyers reading have an opinion as to whether the parents could successfully sue the zoo?

Donna?

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A few years back there was a case of a parent who held their kid over a fence to get a better look at lions or some such. The kid ended up falling into the exhibit, getting mauled and dying. The parents sued the zoo; they settled, so I’m assuming they got something out of it.

Personally I think the zoo should be the ones suing the parents in cases like that (deliberate endangerment by the parents), or even law enforcement getting involved. This case looks more to me like an actual accident though, no deliberate bad actions on either side.

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Remember when Michael Jackson held his son out over the balcony for onlookers to see? @-)

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Here is the mothers statement that was posted on Facebook.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/05/30/mother-whose-son-fell-into-the-cincinnati-zoo-gorilla-enclosure-says-god-protected-my-child/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook