Cincinnati Zoo Kills Gorilla

If any of you are caught up, what do you guys think about the zoos decision for killing the gorilla after a child fell into the enclosure?

If you aren't caught up, here's a link;
http://abcnews.go.com/US/gorilla-sh...led-boy-intervention-expert/story?id=39478421

Personally, I feel like it was an idiotic decision to kill the gorilla. Not even for the fact that gorillas are endangered and we are overpopulated. But because the child climbed through railings, through bushes and then fell off the edge into the enclosure. How on earth is a gorilla enclosure not more secure than that, and why would the child be able to do that. They could have easily tranquilized him (might be a bit risky), but they didn't have to kill it. The other defense is that the "400 pound beast would have killed the child" yet they were in the cage together for 10 minutes and all he had were scratches. He dragged him around.... water.... Nothing too insane.

That's my little rant, what are your thoughts?

 

The gorilla didn't hop out and pull the kid in. The kid somehow managed to get into the enclosure and fall in himself. I don't see why we fault the gorilla for an action he did not take.

 

I think you may be under exaggerating that small portion. At any moment that gorilla could have killed the child. We can't fault the zoo for putting the gorilla down to protect the child. The people who should be held accountable are the parents for not watching there child and the zoo for not having better security. According to a witness though, the child climbing through the fence was no easy feat so honestly i blame the parents more than the Zoo. They were put in a tough situation and imagine if they shot the Gorilla with a tranquilizer dart and it didn't work or it got upset and killed the child before the dart kicked in?

It's a shit situation, but the Zoo is less at fault than the parents in my opinion but they did the right thing. I would probably sue the parents if i ran the zoo.

 

Who cares, it's an animal. Humans are superior. The whole entire point of this gorilla's existence was to entertain us. Everyone suddenly becomes an animal rights activist when an animal dies. I literally can't believe this made the news and other shit like this makes the news. If there was a 1% chance the gorilla would kill the child, I would justify killing the gorilla.

 

That's true, the gorilla could have killed the child at any moment. But he had 10 minutes, which was more than enough, and he did nothing serious. But I definitely blame the parents more than the zoo.

 

Your arguments are fairly ironic while you defend a child when there are 7 billion other people on this planet. What makes his life more valuable than the gorillas?

I don't agree with the methods they use to kill cows, and I don't know why you are assuming all of these things. You cannot compare a cow to an endangered animal living in an enclosure.

And if this situation didn't make a real difference than the gorillas wouldn't be considered endangered, would they?

 

The problem lies in the fact that tranquilizers are effected by the hormones in the animal it is tranquilizing and due to the nature of the situation the gorilla may not have becoming incapacitated for some time and while that happened the child would be in danger.

I'll cover this point later on but realistically the zoo didn't care all that much about the child and definitely would have saved the gorilla if given the choice.

The parents are at fault but shit happens, I've made mistakes. Their mistake is a biggy with carelessness almost landing their child killed and land them as the worst parents of the year aswell as a endangered species killed due to their poor attentiveness to their child.

The problem here lies in the fact zoo's sole purpose isn't for entertainment. Zoo's do great work in attempting to sustain wild populations through breeding programs of endangered species and raising funds for protection of the environment that these rare animals naturally inhabit. The main problem lies in the fact that wildlife breeding and protecting the environment isn't exactly a profitable endevour so a consequence of that is zoo's being an avenue of entertainment.

Gorilla isn't really at fault in the situation at all. He was aware of our existence on the outside of his enclosure and naturally when one finally actually enters the enclosure you have to be curious as one of the smartest animals around it was curiosity that escalated the situation. In addition regardless of whether he was born in captivity or was taken from the wild their instincts are to protect their troops.

My opinion simply put is the zoo would have been liable if they didn't kill the gorilla and the gorilla killed the child. Is that really fair considering the circumstances? Not really but they could have had better safety measures. Zoo's need to be retard proof to stop this kind of situation from occurring. As the zoo and zoo keepers would you really rather kill the endangered species you've likely raised for several years and is an integral part of the breeding program at your zoo or risk the life of one of the 7 billion people on this overpopulated globe? The answer is obvious, the zoo would prefer doing the latter but the logistics around it are if they tranquilized it and the gorilla killed the child the zoo would likely be facing serious law suits and potentially lose a lot of revenue or worse certain attractions at the zoo. Long term this would have negatively affected the zoo more than losing one staple gorilla so from an ecomic and ecological and even almost ethical standpoint it was the right decision.

 

How is it the kids fault? He looks like 5. Do you really think he knows better? It would be retarded to punish a mother's stupidity with her ignorant child's death.

 

Then the problem is simply our standards for value of life. We value humans more than animals while you seem to think that a gorilla's life holds a greater value than a human's life.

 

I think yes it does suck the gorilla was killed, but the zookeepers were trained for events like this and responded appropriately, any Expert will tell you "The gorilla would have killed the boy".

You may sit here and think "but he didn't look like he was going to harm him", okay well all i saw was a huge gorilla around a little boy and people in fear for his life.

Copied directly off of abcnews

"More than 7,000 people were at the Cincinnati zoo when Harambe was killed on Saturday, Maynard said. The "difficult" decision to shoot and kill him was made after he didn't respond to a "special call" zookeepers make to call the gorillas in. Instead, he was stimulated by the child and onlookers' screams and began dragging him around, Maynard said."

These people that shot him aren't there to just attack and hurt these animals. These are animals that they see every single day and look and take care of, Not everyone should be so quick to judge "oh they should have done it differently".



I'm sure after the call didn't work to the gorilla that's when they began thinking of how to prevent this from getting any worse than it already was and at this point they had to take forceful action. What if they shot him with a tranquilizer and he didn't pass out immediately and decided to get agitated and start hurting the boy.

It's an extremely shitty situation, but unfortunately what's done is done. Hopefully other zoo's can take better precautions, learn and train better for events like this or at least have another go to.

I stand by their decision 100%.

 

I think people really underestimate the strength of a gorilla.



The right call was made. The Gorilla was getting agitated by the crowd yelling, it was only a matter of time before something went terribly wrong. The Gorilla's life was over soon as it went to the Zoo.

 

I didn't have time to read through everyone's argument. It is 100% the parents fault that shouldn't even be up for debate and the parents should be held responsible for it as well. Not the Zoo and sure as hell not the Gorilla.

 

A child's life will always be valued more than the Gorilla. If the Gorilla managed to kill the child what affect would that have on the zoo? Even though that parents are at fault it's a fact the right call was made.

 

In my opinon there is only one party at fault for the death of the ape. Gorillas are as mentioned an endagered species and they're now one short due to what would appear to be insufficient or non-compliant guarding, which must be the case otherwise how on earth would a child be able to get into the enclosure? In the UK guarding for a typcal rail must be vertical rails which would make it non climbable, and the gaps to be small enough to stop a 100mm sphere from passing through the gaps [aka an estimated size of a babys head]. If this was the case for the enclosure in question and sufficient guarding was actually in place, could this have prevented the situation occuring?

The answer to that is yes, and i know that some laws and regulations will differ between the UK and US and its also quite likely regulations will differ from regular commercial/residendial to a ZOO but they cant be far off...

In my opinon it is of course the zoo's fault for this. You cannot blame a wandering child who knows no better for managing to get into an enclosure because like the gorilla - the child knows no better and thinks it's doing nothing wrong. Although some people are preaching "bad parenting" saying they should have kept a watchful eye on their child, you could turn your back for two seconds and your kid will be vanished lol, thats what kid's that age do. The ZOO have a duty of care to ALL end users and have failed to provide a safe animal enclosure, to hold a mother accountable for her childs death in this situation is wrong and would be devastating.

The ZOO SHOULD have provided a safe environment for the public to view the animals, if you turn this around and the child did die who would be legally liable for it? The Zoo would be liable. So they should also be held responsible for the death of the ape too, as he died due to what i can only imagine to be negligence of health and safety laws.

 

Think I saw this on youtube, it was harsh

 

If they would try to tranq him he would panic and instantly killed the child. However parents are to blame

 

So many people don't understand this part

 

Yeah, most "gamers" think tranq is instant like it's in games normaly

 

It takes a while for the effect to kick in as well. Time is what they had very little of.