Zoo That Killed 400 lb Gorilla

[missmuffet]

I am sure that you have read that story about the 4 year old boy who fell into the gorilla pen at the Cincinnati Zoo. What do you think about this incident?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/31/zoo-that-killed-400-pound-silverback-harambe-to-protect-boy-stands-by-decision.html?intcmp=hpbt1

[ayin jade]

I saw video of the gorilla and the kid. 

1) That kid should have been watched better, especially as he had joked about doing this before he did it. Perhaps that family should be restricted from that zoo in the future. 

2) As much as I like to preserve critters and care about zoos, the zookeepers had no choice but to kill the gorilla. That gorilla was brutal to the kid. I support what the zoo did.

[ayin jade]

When I was in high school, there was a drunk cowboy on new years day who decided "aint no rhino that aint been rode" or some such quote. He jumped into the rhino exhibit .... and got gored. The good samaritan who jumped in to help him also got gored.They were able to get the "victims" out without any problems. That rhino was not put down and really should not have been harmed by the zookeepers. It was only defending itself against some drunk.

[The_Patriot21]

In Wyoming we have had 2 cases of people picking up wildlife only to harm them...in the first case a baby bison, some dumb tourists picked it up because it was "cold" and brought it to the danger station in Yellowstone.... They ended up putting it down because the herd wouldn't take it back.

 

Not a week later, a LOCAL picked up a baby antelope from off the road because he was "afraid" it would get run over and didn't have "time" to chase it off the road before it would have gotten hit (even though, wild animals tend to be very hard to capture, even with multiple people involved) and turned it into game and fish. Last I heard they were trying to get it back in the herd....no news yet whether they were successful or not, and likely never will, as antelope cover a lot of ground and are harder to track then bison. Add into there was probably a reason the antelope was on the road by itself in the first place.

I point these two stories out just to prove how stupid people can be, and just how much "damage" people can do in the name of preserving nature or not.

 

In the case of this...kid joking about it? Well first off the kid is 4. First off the parents had no clue if he was serious or not and they may have thought they handled it by talking to him. No reason to cancel a trip because of it. With that said the kid is 4, with my experience you never know what a kid is going to do. They should have kept him under a tight leash.

 

Next, how in tarnation did the kid pull it off? Most zoos ive been to have the animal enclosures of dangerous animals-such as guerillas so well blocked off no one, child or adult could possibly climb into. Sounds like the zoo may have been at least partially at fault in this regard.

 

As far as shooting the guerilla? At that point they really had no choice. Maybe they could have shot him with a tranq but they don't go in effect immediately and the action could have angered the animal and he could have killed the kid...at that point the zoo had no choice in the matter.

 

Bottom line is it was a tragic accident and the boy is OK...life moves on.

[ayin jade]

35 minutes ago, The_Patriot2016 said:

In the case of this...kid joking about it? Well first off the kid is 4. First off the parents had no clue if he was serious or not and they may have thought they handled it by talking to him. No reason to cancel a trip because of it. With that said the kid is 4, with my experience you never know what a kid is going to do. They should have kept him under a tight leash.

 

Next, how in tarnation did the kid pull it off? Most zoos ive been to have the animal enclosures of dangerous animals-such as guerillas so well blocked off no one, child or adult could possibly climb into. Sounds like the zoo may have been at least partially at fault in this regard.

 

Yep they should have kept a close eye on him. The kid crawled through a barrier that no one else ever had, then crawled over or through a second barrier that no one ever had before. The kid took a bit of time doing so, time the parents were not watching. And it was just before he did that, that he joked about jumping in the water down there. So really the parents should have held on to him or watched him every second they were at that exhibit. 

[Guest shiloh357]

2 hours ago, bopeep1909 said:

I am sure that you have read that story about the 4 year old boy who fell into the gorilla pen at the Cincinnati Zoo. What do you think about this incident?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/31/zoo-that-killed-400-pound-silverback-harambe-to-protect-boy-stands-by-decision.html?intcmp=hpbt1

The had to save the boy.  Human life takes precedence over the life of an animal.  They had a split second decision to make.   They made the right decision.

[missmuffet]

10 hours ago, ayin jade said:

I saw video of the gorilla and the kid. 

1) That kid should have been watched better, especially as he had joked about doing this before he did it. Perhaps that family should be restricted from that zoo in the future. 

2) As much as I like to preserve critters and care about zoos, the zookeepers had no choice but to kill the gorilla. That gorilla was brutal to the kid. I support what the zoo did.

I agree that the mother should have had better control of the boy. Maybe the mothers negligence should be investigated.

I thought it would have been better to tranquilize the Gorilla but the Zoo authorities said it would have taken 5 to 10 minutes for it to take affect. By that time the boy could have been dead.

The crowd were screaming. They are wondering if that scared the gorilla.

[The_Patriot21]

On that note though, 4 year olds can be difficult to control especially if she was alone with multiple young children to watch. Kids arnt perfect, and unless we want to start controlling people's lives down to how many children one is allowed to leave the house with.....

 

What I'm saying is the mother may not necessarily have been negligent. It just might have been one of those fluke things. Kids are quite good at getting places they are not supposed to be really fast.

[C_Beth]

I think the zoo absolutely did the right thing in killing the gorilla in order to save the child.  I just think it's a shame that it had to come to this, for all involved.

 

[missmuffet]

2 minutes ago, C_Beth said:

I think the zoo absolutely did the right thing in killing the gorilla in order to save the child.  I just think it's a shame that it had to come to this, for all involved.

 

Me too. Very sad situation.