![]() ![]() ![]() When tragedy happens, a common reflex is to place blame, to create a villain as a way of coping with chaos and loss in a poorly ordered world. It was the right decision, albeit a sad one.īut the mother’s failure to watch the boy, not the validity of the shooting, is the debate that set social media ablaze over the ensuing days. Zoo officials decided to shoot Harambe rather than risk the death of the boy at the hands of the 420-pound gorilla. Harambe, a 17-year-old male western lowland gorilla, then dragged the boy through a moat, stopping occasionally to look up at the shocked onlookers. And that’s what makes the reaction to the shooting of a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo on Saturday so interesting.įor the one or two readers who missed the story over Memorial Day weekend, a 4-year-old boy who was visiting the zoo with his mother climbed a railing and walked through bushes before falling 15 feet into the gorillas’ enclosure. Perhaps the biggest knock on modern mothers and fathers is that they are overprotective of their children, and as a result are contributing to a generation of young people who will be incapable of looking after themselves as adults. Those cultural shifts, for which parents are often held responsible, could then be applied to any number of social problems, such as increased drug use and crime, and the decline of the nuclear family. Many of those who raised children in the 1950s, for example, would look at parenting in the 1970s with something akin to horror, as crew cuts gave way to flowing locks and Pink Floyd replaced Fats Domino on teenagers’ turntables. The collective evaluation of parenting serves as a tidy way to define and compare generations, too. It seems that no matter where one falls in the nature versus nurture debate, blame for the ills of society are more often than not placed at the feet of moms and dads. Western lowland gorillas are critically endangered and the killing of Harambe triggered intense criticism of the zoo and the boy’s parents.Most people, whether they have children or not, have strong opinions about parenting. The 17-year-old western lowland silverback gorilla, named Harambe, was shot and killed by Cincinnati Zoo staff after the boy fell into his enclosure within Gorilla World. It plans to complete the modifications by Tuesday, when the exhibit is scheduled to reopen. The Cincinnati Zoo said on Thursday it has reevaluated its Gorilla World exhibit and will modify the railing that surrounds it. REUTERS/William PhilpottĪ statement on the website for Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said the earliest he would conclude his review would be Friday.Ĭincinnati police have said the child’s parents and family were the target of the probe and not the operation or safety of the zoo. Flowers lay around a bronze statue of a gorilla and her baby outside the Cincinnati Zoo's Gorilla World exhibit, two days after a boy tumbled into its moat and officials were forced to kill Harambe, a 17-year-old Western lowland silverback gorilla, in Cincinnati, Ohio, May 30, 2016. ![]()
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