As most of us know, on Saturday April 28, a mountain gorilla was shot dead to save a boy. As most of us have since learned, discussion has moved far beyond the facts.
But let’s start with those. Three-year-old Isaiah Gregg-Dickerson fell into the Gorilla World exhibit at Cincinnati Zoo, where he came into contact with a 17-year-old, 200kg silverback – an adult male – western lowland gorilla called Harambe. From there, details get a little murky. Visitor-filmed footage shows Harambe playing with, dragging or protecting the child, depending on your analysis, for around ten minutes, before trained zoo staff end the saga with a lethal shot. Police may press charges against the zoo, and are investigating to determine if any should be filed against Isaiah's parents.
But in the quest to find blame – was it Isaiah's parents? Were the zoo’s barriers, incident-free since the park’s opening in 1978, not enough? Did staff really have to kill the ape? – there’s a deep hypocrisy that we need acknowledge.
Harambe was born in captivity, raised as a baby by a keeper in Texas, and then shipped off to Cincinnati to a better-suited breeding scenario. As far as living condition goes, he had it pretty good; shelter, food, buddies, some enclosure enrichment to stave off boredom. But none of this was his choice. From the moment he was born his natural-behaviour rights were denied. He’d never really hunt and gather, choose a mate, opt to breed, and do all the gorilla-y things he’d do in the wild.
"How much have you really learned about an animal at a zoo?"
Yes, the western lowland gorilla is listed as critically endangered and its numbers estimated at around 100,000 on a continent where its habitat is being lost at an alarming rate (due to, well, humans). Yes, animals in captivity generally live longer, and we’ve all had David Attenborough show us just how bitterly cruel nature can be. And yes, such programs can function as a last resort - I was desperately hoping the final Pinta Island tortoises would breed in captivity before the species was extinguished (which, after Lonesome George’s death in 2012, it sadly now has been).
The last Pinta Island tortoise, Lonesome George, died in 2012. Source: Getty Images
But captive breeding programs to sustain a species with no view to reintroduce these animals into the wild, regardless of preserving a broad gene pool, feel unnervingly like a scheme more for human benefit. Be honest: how much have you really learned about an animal at a zoo, rather than online, through documentaries or from reading?
It’s far more important to establish natural sanctuaries, like Wellington’s incredible Zealandia, find ways to protect habitats in vulnerable, often resource-rich but economically poor areas, and recognise that an animal’s worth goes beyond our own economic realm.
Dozens of keepers, vets, trainers, animal rights activists and behavioural experts have spoken about Harambe’s actions. Most acknowledge there was a real threat, increased by the unpredictability of a captive animal whose experienced an unsettling breach of its personal space. But no-one can say for sure. Every sentient animal has a unique personality, emotional capacity and behaviour.
Yes, about those sentient animals.
Thousands of outraged citizens around have called for zoo-enclosure overhauls and the parents of the child to face charges over Harambe’s death. It echoes the outcry that followed the 2014 killing of two-year-old male giraffe Marius at Copenhagen Zoo, a death deemed necessary because of genetic unsuitability for breeding. And the anger and subsequent witch hunt when US dentist Walter Palmer shot Cecil the Lion in a Zimbabwe big game reserve in 2015.
But, if you’re a card-carrying carnivore – or, to a lesser extent, dairy imbiber – you’re propagating the kind of speciesism that sees two thirds of the world’s animals bred and dying in awful, cruel and often unimaginable ways through factory farming. More than 56 billion land-dwelling animals are slaughtered each year, with Australia accountable for around 600 million. Yet pigs have been proven to be as smart as dogs. Cows have an emotional depth that surprises no-one when they see footage of a newborn calf dragged away from its distraught mother soon after birth in order to keep that milkin’ train on track. Chickens and rabbits have complex social hierarchies. And then there are the environmental costs, which even impact Harambe’s wild relatives in Africa.
So why are we grieving over Harambe on one hand, and dropping our half-eaten kebab on the street while walking home drunk on the other? Why are we not protesting ag-gag laws, keeping serious welfare breaches behind closed doors in abattoirs and farm sheds? Why are we outraged at a “dog-meat festival”, yet our own “commodity” animals are treated with such horrific disregard? Why are we quick to humanise a gorilla but go to great lengths to avoid putting faces to the cuts we throw on the barbecue on Sunday? And would the same outrage ensue if zoo staff had shot a similarly critically endangered – but harder to anthropomorphise– Visayan warty pig?
Harambe’s death was unfortunate and arguably unavoidable. But we need to look at why we have a sliding scale for animals deserving life. We also need to look at the life we deem acceptable for so many. And while we’re at it, let’s spare a thought for the up-to-2000 species wiped from the planet every single year. That’s blood on all of our hands.
His is a subtle beauty. Source: Getty Images
Bronwyn Thompson is a writer whose work has appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, Rolling Stone, jmag, and more. She has previously volunteered as a keeper at Taronga Zoo.
