It’s rough being a teenage male. It’s even harder to
be a teenage male gorilla.
I think it’s safe to say that almost everyone has
heard about Harambe, the seventeen-year-old gorilla who was shot and killed
after a four-year-old child fell into his enclosure. Harambe allegedly dragged
the child through a moat and it was deemed necessary to shoot the 450 pound
gorilla to save the life of the child. It is that decision which has caused a
lot of controversy over the last few days. Paul Watson, star of Discovery Channel’s
Whale Wars, publically derided this
decision on Facebook and social media, publishing this meme:
Eyewitness statements claim that there is no
evidence that the child was in any real danger, one of the reasons Watson feels
justified in making this meme. Zoo official state that the child was in very
real danger. The eyewitnesses, I would assume, are no experts in gorilla
behavior. I would hope that the zoo officials are.
When I was an undergraduate, I took a class called “Do
Animals Matter?” and, as part of the class, went to the Detroit Zoo three times
to work with zookeepers. By “work with zookeepers” I really mean that I helped
cut some plants for feeding and dug some holes in the anteater habitat (while
the anteaters were elsewhere). My special role in the class, however, was to
study the gorillas and write a short paper on them, a project about which I was
ecstatic. The Detroit Zoo has two Western Lowland Gorillas, both young males,
which was a challenge for the zookeepers
(for reasons that, as someone who has had to control teenage boys, seems fairly
obvious).
For the duration of the class, I was allowed nowhere
near the gorillas. I was able to watch a zookeeper feed the gorillas with the
plants I had helped to gather. I watched them, and they watched me back. For a
little while it rained, and the gorillas hid as best as they could.
The class brought up some pertinent issues about
zoos. I am vehemently opposed to keeping large water mammals such as dolphins
and whales in captivity; there is no aquarium capable of replicating the ocean.
However, I learned from my time in the class and at the Detroit Zoo that it isn’t
just cute and cuddly dolphins that deserve to roam free. The Detroit Zoo had
moved all of their elephants to an elephant sactuary that had more room for the
elephants, a fact the zoo was proud of. The Detroit Zoo was unable to offer
elephants the amount of space they would have in the wild, and because they
were unable to actually return animals born in captivity to Africa, they
instead sent them to a special conservatory where the elephants would live
healthier, happier lives. And the more time I spent at the zoo and in class, I
began to realize that there are even more animals that should not be kept in
captivity.
Bears, for example, will begin to pace when held in
captivity. No one knows why they do this, but I watched a polar bear carefully
pace up and down the enclosure, bobbing its head along. This scene had such an
effect on me I included it in “Brenna and the Spaceman,” my retelling of East O’ the Sun and West O’ the Moon,
published in Twice Told Tales by
Bearded Scribe Publishing. Like every other animal that ever existed, bears
were not meant to stay in enclosures. They, like humans, were meant to expand,
to explore. Evolution gave all of us some form of biological manifest destiny.
However, we come now to our Catch-22. The Western
Lowland Gorilla is endangered. The WWF and other groups are doing all that they
can to try and preserve their original habitats, but we may run out of time or
lose the corporate battle for land. And if that is the case, surely we have an
obligation to keep the gorillas alive in any way we can—even if that means
putting them in zoos. Even if the habitats are smaller than habitats in the
wild. Even if the fences are more in need of mending than the White House’s
gate. Right?
One interesting fact I learned in “Do Animals
Matter?” was that there are people who believe that apes should have the right
to be considered people, which would mean that shooting an ape would legally be
the same as shooting a human being. If we go back millions of years, after all,
a common ancestor gave way to the Greater Apes, the Lesser Apes, and the
Australopitheci. (Is that the scientific term for plural of Australopithecus?) Australopithecus
Afarensis, including our famous Lucy, would later offshoot to the homo genus, of which we ourselves claim
membership. Genetically, historically, gorillas are our cousins. They have the
ability to learn sign and speak to humans. They make and use tools. They are
capable of emotions such as love and fear. They have senses of humor.
They can crush the bones of an adult’s hand with
very little effort.
Having to shoot a gorilla is never an ideal solution.
However, keeping gorillas alive can be just as perilous; ask Dian Fossey if you
don’t believe me.
At the end of the day, I hope that Harambe’s death
can mean something for the rest of us. I hope that it encourages us to support
our zoos and encourage them to expand and improve their facilities so
four-year-olds don’t fall into gorilla enclosures. I hope that people stop
blaming the parents of the little boy; four year old boys can be wee devils.
Look away for 0.3 seconds and suddenly it’s Chernobyl. I have subbed
kindergarten; I know this for a fact. And I hope that zookeepers are closely
examining this issue and coming up with different solutions, so that when this
happens the next time there will be an alternative plan to shooting the gorilla.
Because gorillas matter—almost as much as four-year-old boys.
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