Why I’m Mad About Harambe’s Death

Workers at the Cincinnati Zoo fatally shot Harambe, a 17-year-old silverback gorilla in a bid to protect Isaiah Dickerson, a three year old boy who had fallen into the gorilla’s enclosure. Many people, including myself, have been left furious at the murder of Harambe, who was one of a critically endangered species.

Zoo officials claimed the 450-pound gorilla was killed because he was dragging the boy and might have hurt him – deliberately or inadvertently. But experts, including senior lecturer in primate behaviour Emily Bethall and one of the world’s most renowned primatologists, Jane Goodall, take the stance that the animal’s behaviour was protective rather than threatening. In the email released by the Jane Goodall Institute, she wrote “it looked as though the gorilla was putting an arm around the child[…]anyway, whatever, it is a devastating loss to the zoo, and to the gorillas.”

“A typical silverback stance, to us it looks quite threatening, but in fact it doesn’t necessarily mean that the gorilla is in any way being aggressive,” states Emily Bethall in response to the footage. “His behaviour towards the boy is very gentle,[…]on the whole, they’re gentle giants. Theyre more likely to flee from a dangerous situation than waste energy being aggressive.”

Primate expert Cyril Grueter of the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia feels that the decision to shoot the ape was drastic, and that Harambe was not attacking the child – instead, he might have been simply playing with him.

Given that Harambe, in the 10 minutes that Isaiah was in his enclosure, showed no interest in deliberately hurting him, I am horrified that there has been no mention of zookeepers attempting other methods of protecting the toddler. As the zoo director stated, tranquilizing the gorilla would not be instant and therefore. poses greater risk to the child, as Harambe would likely be startled due to the painful jab. However, gorillas are capable of some reason and if someone known to Harambe had tried to distract and calm him, perhaps by offering food, it might have been possible to save both lives. This position is supported by Ian Redmond from Ape Alliance, who worked in Rwanda with primatologist Diane Fossey in the 1970s, and who still works with gorillas.

In a similar situation in 1996, a toddler fell into a gorilla enclosure in Chicago. In that case, the boy was carried to paramedics by the gorilla, Binti Jua. In 1986, a young boy fell into the gorilla exhibit at Jersey Zoo in the Channel Islands. The male gorilla, Jambo, who was described later as a “gentle giant” stood over the unconscious child protectively until the zookeepers climbed in to collect the boy. In fact, there are no known instances of a captive gorilla killing a human. Ian Redmond says that in the rare cases where gorillas have attacked humans, the human was always to blame. “All the incidences I know where people have been hurt by gorillas, or in some cases killed by gorillas, are in the wild where the gorilla feared an attack or was actually attacked,” says Redmond. Humans, on the other hand, murder an estimated 400,000 fellow humans and 150 billion animals per year.

Why is it, then, that we value an endangered gorilla’s life far below that of a human?

The child reportedly asked his mother repeatedly if he could enter the enclosure – this should have prompted her to keep a closer eye on him in case he decided to take matters into his own hands. Too often, innocent animals are killed because of the negligence of humans. As police investigate the family of the young boy and the actions of the zoo, we need to learn our lessons.

The enclosure’s barriers should not be penetrable by a child, and what happened at the Cincinnati Zoo made it quite clear that the security of the enclosure, which is reportedly over 30 years old, is not adequate. Equally, parents who bring their children to the zoo have a duty of care to ensure they do not approach wild animals. A statement released by Isaiah’s family, they thank zoo staff for “the actions taken to protect our child,” clearly forgetting that this was their responsibility.

No more innocent lives need to be lost – this would never have happened without the negligence of both the zoo and the parent. Harambe is just another lost life, another dead body in a string of animals who have their rights stripped from them. I’m mad because we think we own the planet, that we can do whatever we like while other living creatures bend to our will. I’m mad because it’s not fair, because we value animals’ lives at far less than our own, simply because they are not human. It’s not about Harambe. It’s not an overreaction. We need to do better.