Reaction to Cincinnati Zoo's Harambe The Gorilla Incident; Only Option Was To Shoot - Kill

On Sunday, May 29th, 2016, a 17 year old gorilla named Harambe was shot and killed in the Cincinnati Zoo after a 4 year old boy fell into it's enclosure, in a successful effort to save the boy from any further injury or death. The series of events start as a casual day where visitors are observing the animals in their enclosure. Before the boy fell, there were actually three gorillas on display, two females and one large male, Harambe. Somehow, the boy, son of Michelle Gregg, was able to get past a wire fence and through about 4 feet of bushes before he fell 15 feet into a shallow moat with only about a foot and a half of water. The gorillas were not in this particular area at the time, which is why the two female gorillas were not close to the boy. They were able to be recalled back into another enclosure away from the boy by zookeepers. Harambe was unresponsive and sped immediately over to the boy when he heard the splash.

Harambe, weighing in at a whopping 450 pounds of extremely strong and agile gorilla, is now hovering over the 40 pound 4 year old. The crowd, of course, is witnessing (and recording) the series of events. People are screaming and don't really understand how to process it. Perhaps the mixture of noise and overall frantic people that Harambe can see, and/or his wild animal instincts, prompt him to take the boy by his ankle and violently drag him through the water of the moat into another part of the moat. He sits with him and appears to protect him, but that may not be what was happening. He would drag the boy to one part of the enclosure, then sit, then repeat. This went on for about ten minutes. Finally, the zoo response team made the decision to kill Harambe to rescue the boy.

Many have said that it was not necessary to kill the gorilla, and that he was protecting the boy. That just appears to be emotional talk coming from upset people. Much of it is false outrage, fueled by a phenomenon that can only be described as internet groupthink. People want to be part of something, so if they see a beautiful animal killed by people, it's easy to pile on the mother and call her names, even send her death threats, from the anonymity of the internet to make oneself feel good. Of course, the outrage, the change.org petitions, and the vigils for an animal most people have never heard of until Sunday May 29th will go away. It's unfortunate that the zoo-born and raised gorilla had to meet that fate, but the silver lining to the story is the fact that the boy is safe.

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