Killing Of Gorilla At Cincinnati Zoo Has Made People Very, Very Angry
Outrage reigns on the internet today, following the weekend shooting of a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo.
The 17-year-old gorilla, Harambe, was put down by the zoo’s Dangerous Animal Response Team after a four-year-old boy crawled through a barrier and tumbled into his enclosure, ABC reports.
Disturbing video of the event showed the boy being dragged around by the gorilla, though some observers have added that the gorilla seemed to be acting in a protective manner towards the child too.
The zoo argued that deadly force was used instead of tranquilisers because of the urgent need to rescue the boy. The child was hospitalised for treatment of non-life threatening injuries. Officials have not released any more details, including names of his family members.
That explanation has not eased the rage of critics, who have started a petition on Change.org calling for the parents to be “held accountable for their actions of not supervising their child”.
“We the undersigned feel the child's safety is paramount in this situation. We believe that this negligence may be reflective of the child's home situation. We the undersigned actively encourage an investigation of the child's home environment in the interests of protecting the child and his siblings from further incidents of parental negligence that may result in serious bodily harm or even death.”
As of this writing, it is just 1,000 signatures shy of its goal of 50,000 names.
A Facebook page entitled ‘Justice for Harambe’ has also been created, and has already gathered more than 17,000 fans. The admins of the FB page are more dubious of the urgent need to use deadly force against the gorilla, asking, in reaction to the released video footage, “where’s the violence that the news represented took place?”
What are your thoughts? Who’s in the wrong here? Or, is this just a terribly unfortunate scenario?
Photo: WLWT
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Don't they have better contingencies for incidents like these
i know aye, you'd think by now they would find another way to help the boy.
The outcome was sad, however, it was the only logical way to quickly save the boys life without the risk of making the animal angry and harming the boy
he was probably just trying to protect the poor baby! he didnt eat and/or harm the baby, did he?
Animals can sense when someone means harm, that's why they often get along with kids (like a cat not scratching a baby even though its tail is being pulled). I agree, it doesn't look like the gorilla was harming the child at all; the adults here were just too trigger happy.