Harambe’s Tragic Tale: The Truth Behind Gorillas in Zoos | Cid Dwyer

I recently fell down a captive gorilla rabbit hole, so I thought I would compile my findings in a video.

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0:00 - The incident
2:55 - The death of Harambe
12:25 - The western lowland gorilla in captivity
24:18 - Gorilla breeding
35:10 - Are zoos saving gorillas?
42:06 - The tragic life of Harambe

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tags:
#Harambe Cid Dwyer #Ciddwyer

[RedTime]

A big difference here is that people were screaming, throwing things, yelling, and wailing. In other situations, people didn't dare to scream or yell because they were afraid of scaring the gorillas. There are so many little points to this story and there really isn't a rifht answer because we truly can't tell what could've happened. Through all of this, that little boy AND Harmbe were the victims in this.

[mrooneyfox]

Such a sad story. Something similar happened at the Chicago zoo when I was a child. A two-year-old fell into the pit and became unconscious. Luckily a female gorilla picked them up and kept them safe from the males while help arrived.

[Agrizzybear]

I used to intern at a zoo in college while I was interested in primate behavior. I spent hours working on gorilla enrichment to give them something to do. It was heartbreaking watching them solve my puzzle in seconds (or simply rip it apart) and go back to being bored. The regurgitation/reingestion problem was huge there.

Worth noting there was a zoo in the Netherlands (?) that managed to solve that issue by just giving them more space. Like A LOT of space. These are animals that in their daily life walk miles and graze constantly. The closest most zoos can do is cut up their food really small and spread out their feedings. It's not even close to enough.

[atlasbonds]

For anyone back in the day to say they didn't know much about how gorillas lived and think it's okay to put them in these small cages just bothers me so much. They may not have known all of the details of their lives, but they knew this environment is the complete opposite of where they came from. Also, how heartbreaking is it that even after people became aware of how much gorillas are affected by emotional trauma that they would still continue to traumatize them. The 97% death rate "up until 5 years ago" thing is heartbreaking. The woman being woken up by babies who had their mothers killed is also terribly heartbreaking.

[alyssestephens]

Eating, vomiting, and then eating the vomit is called rumination disorder and it’s an eating disorder that humans can have too. As someone who suffered with an eating disorder myself (not that one, but a different one), disordered eating is most definitely a sign of mental distress and lack of control in your environment. Seeing the gorillas displaying that behavior was so jarring to me, they were living in such horrible conditions under so much mental stress and strain… :(

[Warewolfgirl]

At no point should this kid have been able to get through the fence and bushes to the edge of that enclosure. A child was injured and traumatised, and an innocent animal was killed.

[hannahedmond]

The fact that a toddler was so easily able to get into an animal enclosure is definitively on the zoo.

[misspinkpunkykat]

This happened at a zoo in England. The alpha male protected him until help arrived. Happened at a zoo in New York where a female gorilla picked him up, held him in her arms and cradled him until help arrived.

[KateKanenator]

The behaviors - rocking side to side, eating their own waste, etc - and health problems sound like human responses to ongoing, devastatingly traumatic conditions. It's not surprising. . .

[undeadsweetheart]

Those poor gorillas, i couldn't imagine being isolated for 30 years. That's so inhumane.

[DaniS]

The part about the baby gorillas trying to wake their mothers is so heartbreaking.

[WulfLovelace]

A lot of people do not realize the awful history of the zoos. And that they have had a face lift now, but they have contributed to some horrible things.

[daylenkelly]

"paying the ultimate price for something that is not his fault" hit me so hard.

[shellybrulez]

I always point back to the Pittsburgh zoo and the painted dog habitat. In that case there was a barrier and numerous warning signs, but parents would not heed these warnings and a two-year-old boy was lifted by his mother above the barrier to 'see the exhibit better'. He was then dropped and mauled to death and one of the dogs was shot and killed. The woman even had the nerve to sue the zoo in the end and it was settled out of court.

[Katie-mwpd]

I was one of the first people to say “how did the mother let this happen?” When I first heard about this story, because I assumed no zoo in a first-world country would ever be negligent enough to have an enclosure so easy for a kid to crawl into, the mother must have been completely oblivious and neglecting to watch her child. Seeing that fence, now I realize it was only a matter of time until someone got into the enclosure, could’ve happened to any parent on a rough day. The fact that there was nothing but three wires and some bushes to keep kids from crawling into the enclosure is absolutely insane.

[mikifauns]

45:55 There is an issue with gorilla tourism as well. Remember what Pickett said about most gorillas dying of human diseases during the trip overseas? Well, what has been happening is humans acting as reservoirs for diseases which then spreads to gorillas. Tuberculosis is a huge one which is one of the leading causes of death in gorillas.

[Spooper_Kaitlin]

This situation was so unfortunate. It’s upsetting because the barrier that they had around the habitat already surpassed the standards, yet something like this was still able to happen. As someone that grew up seeing Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo, his passing really hit me hard.

[facemonkeys]

Hearing Harambe’s zookeeper speak was hard to watch 😢

[dhaliaseed]

At the Portland Zoo I saw the elephants. They had separated a baby elephant from his mother. The baby was just walking in circles by himself. His mother on the other side of a wall could hear him and they were talking to each other and she just kept running into the wall. Just run into wall, talk to him, run into wall. She did this the whole time I was at the zoo. I was 10 and extremely disturbed and have not patronized a zoo since. I know they can be important for animal conservation but all I could think was if I was a mother and they had my baby out of sight separated but could still hear each other I would try to run thru the wall to.

[nightsky]

When the news about Harambe came out, I thought about how it would be possible for a child to get into that enclosure, how the mother wasn’t responsible enough. After watching this video, the “accidents happen” bit that the mom said stuck with me. I hate how people were so cruel to her. She was watching her other kids, it’s not like she was busy talking to other adults or had left her child unattended. I think it’s RIDICULOUS that an enclosure with animals that are so POWERFUL and in a place where people frequent a lot (specially kids), they choose to put a fence that is so easy to bypass and it’s just asking for accidents like this to happen. It’s common sense to install fences that actually stop people from entering the enclosures.