A Brief History
On May 28, 2016, animal lovers were subjected to the horror of a zoo worker from the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden shooting a beloved adult male gorilla named Harambe to death. A three year old boy had climbed into the gorilla exhibit and was scooped up by the big ape, causing fear that the boy would be harmed.
Digging Deeper
The mother of the subject child was at the zoo with perhaps four children and lost track of the boy who climbed into the gorilla exhibit. Her inattention led numerous people to accuse her of causing the 17 year old 450 pound gorilla to be killed unnecessarily. Others defended the woman and she was not charged.
The horrible incident spurred renewed debate over the ethics of keeping animals in zoos, unnatural environments without the normal room for them to wander as nature dictates. Others claim the educational value of zoos trumps the horror of captivity for the animals. What do you think?
Note: Some sources say the boy was four years old. An interesting anecdote is that this author was able to see the famous white gorilla, Snowflake, at the Barcelona Zoo in the early 1980s.
Question for students (and subscribers): Should zoos be allowed to exist? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Deez Nuuts, editor. Harambe: The Misunderstood Gorilla. Kindle, 2016.
French, Tom. Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives. Hachette Books, 2011.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Tim Ide, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.