In attempts to save the boy among the screaming on-lookers, staff members shot 17-year-old Harambe, which has now prompted protests nationwide.
Advertisement
The child came into close contact with endangered ape Harambe, and the United States zoo took the decision to shoot dead the gorilla.
While many are outraged at the boy’s mother, Michelle Gregg, as Western Journalism reported on Wednesday, the zoo may be partially to blame for the incident, based on new images of the gorilla enclosure as it stood last week.
The animal rights group Stop Animal Exploitation Now said on Tuesday it would file a negligence complaint against the zoo with the US Department of Agriculture.
The Cincinnati Zoo plans to reopen its Gorilla World exhibit next week with a reinforced, higher safety barrier following the death of a gorilla to protect a boy who had entered its enclosure. Ham, however, doesn’t express much remorse that the innocent animal was killed as he uses the tragedy to condemn abortion. The gorilla exhibit had been examined in April and no violations were noted, the USDA said.
U.S. zoos are left to decide under federal rules how to make animal exhibits safe.
The zoo said there had been no earlier breaches in Gorilla World’s 38-year history and that the previous barrier had passed multiple inspections by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which accredits zoos.
“If there was a situation where we had human life at stake, we would also put down an animal”, Altrui said.
“If they had shot [Harambe] with a tranquilizer, it’s possible that he could have become aggressive toward the child and killed the child”, she said, adding that, “a lot of times you can shoot an animal with a tranquilizer and it not work at all”.
WEIGHING in on the Harambe story which is generating avid interest on social and mainstream media, officials of the Emperor Valley Zoo yesterday declared that faced with a similar situation, the choice would be the same as that made by the Cincinnati Zoo.
If the Cincinnati Zoo had allowed the gorilla to kill the child, Altrui said, the community would be having a much different discussion – one that still took aim at the zoo.
Advertisement
Another 911 caller, an unidentified woman, can be heard urging others at the scene to “try and calm down” and “be quiet”, to avoid agitating the gorilla.
