On Monday, a four year old boy fell into an endangered western lowland gorilla’s enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. To protect the young boy the gorilla, Harambee, was shot shortly after the four year old fell into the enclosure which is causing people’s emotions to run wild.

In a video shared through social media the young boy is seen being dragged around the ground, mud, and in the water. Although the video shows Harambee carelessly handling the four year old it cuts off before the gorilla was shot so we are unable to see the interactions between the gorilla and the boy in the moment he was shot.

Based on a previous incident where a young child fell into the same breed of gorilla’s enclosure and was found to be being protected by the gorilla some assume that Harambee was doing the same.

However as I watch the small boy being dragged around the enclosure I can not imagine how the boy would not be injured, whether Harambee was attempting to protect him or not. Not only is it near to impossible to tell Harmabee’s intentions with the boy in such a high stress situation but a gorilla’s form of protection may be and seems to be extremely harmful for a young boy.

The Cincinnati Zoo must take partial responsibility for this whole ordeal, which they have by publicly apologizing for the situation while still standing by their decision to kill Harambee. If the proper netting, fencing, or whatever protection that was needed had actually been installed around this enclosure, none of this would have happened. Simply put, none of this should have been able to happen.

The zoo should have the common knowledge that restless kids running around a zoo filled with harmful animals should not be held responsible for knowing the possible danger of these animals. As a result, the zoo should have done a better job of creating barriers that would not allow such an accident to happen.

The public is blaming the parents of the child and/or the child himself for Harambee’s death. It is true that the parents should have been more aware of what their child should be doing and although, yes, there should be no situation where a four year old is able to fall into a zoo animal’s enclosure —I know from experience that kids move fast and you could take your eye off of them for one second and lose them in the crowd.

I strongly believe that there was no other option than to kill Harambee, as sad as that may be. It should always be the last resort for zoo animals to be shot but there was a four year old boy in a gorilla enclosure being carelessly dragged across the rocky floor, and it was said that if a tranquilizer gun was used the boy may have been killed by the time it kicked in.

Had the killing of Harambee not happened, then instead of talking about a dead gorilla, we might very well be talking about a dead four year old boy instead. Having a four year old brother myself, I understand that young children are unaware of the dangers of animals, and apparently are not well protected by the zoos themselves. Based on this, there was no other option.

Creative commons photo source: www.flickr.com/photos/twheatley/5524805924