General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Shaun King: Racism has found its way into the Cincinnati Zoo saga [View all]ladjf
(17,320 posts)IMO, racism played no roll in this situation.
A real question is where were the care takers that deal with this gorilla on a daily basis? The gorilla was
raised from infancy to the age of sixteen by one handler and for his 17th year by the handlers at Cincinnati.
To my knowledge there have been on four incidents of children falling into gorilla enclosures in the U.S.
In the first three incidents, the gorillas purposefully assisted in the rescue. The tapes of the Cincinnati
incident did not show that the gorilla had any malicious intentions toward the child. At one point, the child was sitting down facing the gorilla and was petting the animals' arms.
Apparently, none of the handlers that worked with him on a daily basis were present at the time.
But, the fact remains that the enclosure was NOT safe although the zoo had the gall to state otherwise. The engineering obviously had overlooked the fence setup to some degree. And, the mother
should not have let the child out of her sight especially since the child said he wanted to get into the pond.
The zoo might get sued for there engineering error. On top of that, the gorilla was worth several million dollars. Everyone lost in episode.