On Harambe & the Internet

This week’s internet debate has centered around the shooting of Harambe, a 400-pound silverback western lowland gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo, after a four-year-old boy fell into the moat surrounding his exhibit.  As per usual when it comes to animal rights issues, facts seem to be missing from most of these conversations; although I am certainly not an expert on gorilla behavior, I wanted to take an opportunity to synthesize some of the informed opinions that experienced professionals have expressed this week, in addition to some of the information I’ve gathered across seven years of working in zoological environments as it relates to this situation.

Before I go any further with this, I need to acknowledge again that I have never worked with gorillas, or directly with any primate species (well, aside from humans, although to be honest I actually don't consider myself that good at working with those).  However, many people with way less (read: zero) zoological experience have also felt it necessary to offer their opinion on this situation; as much as I love a good misinformed keyboard war, I hope to offer some perspective as someone who has dedicated more than 2,000 unpaid hours to working behind-the-scenes at three AZA-accredited facilities. 

The first thing that needs to be clarified is that this is not a scene from The Jungle Book.  Gorillas—especially full-grown males—are inherently dangerous.  Even when not aggravated, their strength (at least six times that of an adult human) means that they can cause serious injury with even an absent-minded swipe.  Although gorillas have been observed as one of the gentler species of great apes, they are still considered Class I: in the same category as lions and tigers and bears, oh my!  In my experience working around other Class I mammals, the functioning assumption among their keepers is that if you wind up unprotected in the same space as one of those animals, you will die.  It doesn’t matter if you raised the tiger from birth, or if you’ve been working with the bear for ten years, or if you’re a helpless child that fell into the gorilla’s space: from a Dangerous Animal Response Team (DART) perspective, the unfortunate decision came down to the human life or the animal’s.

Uhh... #fitnessgoals?

Another hot topic that everyone seems to have thoughts on is whether there were other options aside from shooting the animal.  The keepers did initially try to recall all three gorillas (Harambe and his two lady friends), but despite the promise of treats inside, it’s not surprising that he chose to stay out considering the anxious energy of the crowd and the rarity of his new EED (environmental enrichment device, AKA the kid).  Since Harambe was not leaving the child voluntarily, many people have suggested that the zoo “should” have used a tranquilizer instead of a shot.  I’m also not an expert on tranquilizers, but there are some reasonable questions to be raised about the logistics of this recommendation.

Because of the blood-brain barrier and the time it takes drugs to be absorbed into cells, depending on the type and amount of sedative used, a tranquilizer dart injected into a muscle could have taken anywhere from five to thirty minutes to start taking effect, and some tranquilizers even have an initial excitatory phase.  Not to mention, an animal that has just been shot would probably have a reaction to that aversive stimulus.  Because the kid could have been killed in one blow as mentioned earlier, the added time and risk of using a tranquilizer could not be afforded.

Additionally, the amount of tranquilizing agent that would be needed in this situation is a big question mark.  On the one hand, since the gorilla was already wound up and the response team would need him to be knocked out as quickly as possible, they would likely have chosen to use more sedative than normal.  However, this opens up a risky situation: the more drugs used, the less likely the animal is to wake back up.  All things considered, the use of a tranquilizer would have created an even more dangerous situation for the child and would not have even guaranteed to keep Harambe alive.

Science and facts and stuff: recommended for use 
before pulling out the tranquilizing gun.

The next subject to come up is regarding how the kid got into the moat in the first place, and everyone’s first reaction seems to be pointing fingers at the parents.  Obviously, I’m even less of an expert on parenting than I am on gorillas (I generally try to stay as far away from young humans as possible), but I can attest that at each zoological facility I’ve been at, kids get lost ALL the time.  Granted, they usually don’t try to climb into the animal exhibits while unsupervised, but the fact is that no parent is perfect.  While it’s fun to play the blame game while hiding behind a keyboard, consider that this mother’s one moment of inattentiveness led to the loss of a truly priceless animal and serious injuries to her offspring—far graver consequences than most parents have ever had to confront.  Instead of pointing fingers, I encourage all of you that are responsible for children (be it through parenting, babysitting, or supervising your drunk friends) to take this incident as a sobering reminder of the huge weight that your job carries.

Questions have also been raised about the exhibit barrier and whether it is sufficient to keep both humans and animals safe.  In the past few decades, exhibits have been evolving toward a more naturalistic aesthetic and moving away from the steel bars and concrete floors characteristic of early zoos.  Exhibit designers always have animal security first in mind, and most exhibits have multiple barriers to the animal getting out of any enclosure.  Railings and various other obstacles generally keep humans safe from falling into exhibits, assuming the visitors are abiding by the posted and implied safety guidelines (e.g., don’t crawl between the fence wires, through the bushes, and into the moat).  However, with this situation and several related incidents, such as the guy who jumped into a lion yard last month, keeping humans out is surprisingly becoming just as critical as keeping animals in.  In addition to Cincinnati’s recent modification to the fence surrounding the gorilla exhibit, zoos all over the nation will likely be re-evaluating their barriers from the human side to avoid further catastrophes.  (Granted, these catastrophes could also be avoided with common sense, but as we keep seeing you can't count on that.)

The zookeeper's thought process when it comes to guest safety, let's be honest.

At this point, I hope you’re starting to understand how this whole fiasco happened and why the related decisions were made.  Maybe you (like 99% of the internet) are still stuck in the second stage of grief, but maybe you’re ready to accept what happened as an accident that was handled appropriately to save the child, and take a step back to evaluate what each one of us can do to improve the welfare of the other ~125,000 western lowland gorillas that we share the world with.  Beyond this one death in the US, wild populations are disappearing from their native forest habitats at an astonishing rate: due to a combination of Ebola outbreak, bushmeat hunting, and habitat loss, the entire population is predicted to decrease by about 80% over the next three generations.  If you really want to help gorillas, please consider learning about or even donating to relevant conservation projects, such as the Wildlife Wood Project or the Wildlife Conservation Society's work.  Additionally, zoos all over the nation are participating in the gorilla Species Survival Plan, a collaborative breeding effort to preserve the species, and reproductive biologists collected viable sperm from Harambe so his genes can continue contributing to this effort and live on in the next generation.

Finally, I just want to emphasize one more element of this situation: while the nation might be sad and enraged about his death, there is no one that loved Harambe more than the keepers that worked with him every day and literally dedicate their lives to his species.  Not you, not me, not the fun people at PETA, no one loved that individual more.  My condolences go out to those keepers, and I implore all the rest of you to take the energy raised by this incident off the internet comment boards and apply it toward actually helping animals, both those in zoos and out in the wild.