Flowers lay around a bronze statue of a gorilla and her baby outside the Cincinnati Zoo’s Gorilla World exhibit days after a 3-year-old boy fell into the moat and officials were forced to kill Harambe, a 17-year-old Western lowland silverback gorilla June 2, 2016 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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The shooting of Harambe, 17, in May this year caused an worldwide uproar, with many believing the gorilla’s life should have been spared. The zoo has since deleted its Twitter account.
Or a tweet stating that a yellow pond turtle has 8 vertebrate was swiftly bombarded with tweets like “Harambe had 8 hearts”, “the Cincinnati zoo has 0 harambe” and “harambe loved turtles”.
The Cincinnati Zoo deleted its Twitter account after saying yesterday that it was being constantly barraged with Harambe memes.
However, despite Maynard pointing out the distress felt by the zoo upon facing an influx of Harambe memes, his words seemed to have the opposite effect, prompting more Facebook and Twitters users to begin posting memes directly to the zoo’s social media accounts.
“We are not amused by the memes, petitions, and signs about Harambe”, Cincinnati Zoo director, Thane Maynard told the Associated Press in an email early this week.
The move comes a day after the Cincinnati Zoo said it was “not amused” by the flood of comments jokes, memes and mentions of Harambe – the gorilla – on its micro-blogging website page, Time.com reported on Tuesday.
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If want to give meaning to Harambe’s life, Maynard said, there are certainly better ways, such as donating to the conservation effort.
