An animal behavior expert has said that the 17-year-old gorilla,
Harambe, who was killed over the weekend after a 3-year-old boy fell
into its enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo may have been agitated by the
crowd’s screams.
Professor Gisela Kaplan, a professor at the Centre for Neuroscience and Animal Behavior at the University of New England in New Zealand, said the gorilla was a “gentle giant” who initially sought to protect the child.
The gorilla, she said, likely dragged the boy to guard him in response to the crowd’s screams.
“Gorillas don’t attack,” she said, according to The Age.
“They are a peaceful species. They will only attack if there’s a real
threat to their own existence. There are records of them saving children
before in very similar situations when a child had fallen into an
enclosure.”
According to the Australia Broadcasting Corp., Kaplan elaborated more, saying the gorilla wouldn’t have perceived the boy as a threat.
“He would have known by the sheer size and demeanor of the little boy
that he was not a threat, because size difference does matter in the
natural world,” she told the broadcaster. “It would have been very
obvious to the gorilla at once that it [the boy] was not a threat, so
there was no need to react aggressively to it.”
She added: “Some people have argued that ‘well, he dragged the boy
through the water,’ but I have to say that they do that with their own
young to get them out of danger quickly and the danger in this case,
ironically, were the screaming adults.
“There was pandemonium there and total chaos and the gorilla very
likely responded to the screaming and took the boy away, around the
corner, away from the screaming [to save him].”
Kaplan agreed that the boy’s life was a greater priority to
Harambe’s, but said there might be a peaceful solution rather than
shooting it.
“[Harambe] was probably doing all the kind of benign things that a
gorilla can do and he was being penalized for it and lost his life and
traumatized his entire family,” she said. “Why couldn’t they have shot
him in the shoulder?”
The Cincinnati Zoo director, however, didn’t agree.
“This child was being dragged around,” director Thane Maynard said. ”
His head was banging on the concrete. This was not a gentle thing. The
child was at risk. We’re very fortunate that he was OK.”
Maynard also said that tranquilizers might not have worked for as
long as 10 minutes. “The gorilla was clearly agitated,” he said.
“Looking back, we would make the same decision.”
Kaplan described male silverback gorillas as “gentle giants” and “conflict negotiators.”
“What makes the incident so controversial and tragic is that it’s
been known now, for at least 30 years, by various incidences in American
and English zoos, that gorillas are very gentle and the males have one
role: to keep the peace in the group,” she said. “So he is a conflict
negotiator and peace maker.”
“They are not carnivores, they don’t kill other things, they don’t kill other people. They don’t attack willy-nilly,” she said.
She added: “What they do in the wild is, if there is a real threat
perceived by the silverback male, they will charge forward as a warning
and sometimes he will use branches to make a bit of a percussion sound
as well. [He will] rattle the tree a bit and flay his arms around and
that usually convinces [the opponent] to backtrack really quickly.”
Family issues new statement
The family of the boy issued a statement on the matter on Wednesday,
providing an update. The boy, they said, is “still doing well.”
“We continue to praise God for His grace and mercy, and to be
thankful to the Cincinnati Zoo for their actions taken to protect our
child,” the family said in a statement, according to Cincinnati.com.
“We are also very appreciative for the expressions of concern and
support that have been sent to us. Some have offered money to the
family, which we do not want and will not accept.”
“If anyone wishes to make a gift, we recommend a donation to the Cincinnati Zoo in Harambe’s name.”
Cincinnati police are looking into potential criminal charges against
the parents. “It’s too early to say whether it was recklessness on the
part of the parent,” Lt. Steve Saunders told Cincinnati.com. “We’re just
doing our due diligence to make sure we know what happened.”
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