Before the Cincinnati Zoo tragedy involving a little boy and a giant gorilla, there have been other, similar encounters that ended without the primate being shot to death. In 1986, a 5-year-old boy named Levan Merritt fell into a gorilla enclosure and was knocked unconscious. A silverback gorilla named Jambo stroked the boy’s back as if to soothe him. In 1996, a 3-year-old boy tumbled more than 20 feet into the gorilla exhibit. She placed him near the cage’s door and stepped back as zookeepers picked up the child.

People talk about how the child in cincy could have had his limbs torn out of socket and stop thinking right at that point. If people could still think critically and do research for themselves they would find that gorilla toddlers the same age have the muscle density of grown and strength to match. Being handled the way that boy was would be completely normal to them and Harambe would never have thought otherwise for a human child.

while gorillas COULD cause grievous harm, theyre one of the only animals with the ability to differentiate between helplessness and threats. a gorilla isnt likely to attack something so much smaller than itself. theyre one of the gentlest ape species we’ve studied. had those children fallen into a chimp enclosure, there would have been a lot more grief