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[Audax]

Zoo Witness Says Gorilla Was Protecting Child

http://abcnews.go.com/US/zoo-witness-gorilla-protecting-year-wasnt-hurting/story?id=39467509

A witness present at the Cincinnati Zoo says the 450-pound gorilla that was shot and killed after a 4-year-old boy fell into his enclosure was not "hurting" the boy, but instead seemed to be "protecting him."

"The little boy, once he fell, I don't think the gorilla even knew that he was in there until he heard him splashing in the water," Brittany Nicely told ABC News on Sunday, explaining that zoogoers' screams drew more attention to the Saturday afternoon incident.

"The gorilla rushed the boy, but did not hit the boy," Nicely said. "He almost was guarding the boy, was protecting him."

[Steve Kean's Hypnotoad]

The parents should be thrown in prison for a decent while in my opinion. Nothing annoys me more than irresponsible parents/owners. Lets start completely missing out the unaccusable middle man, in this case the kid and in the case of dog attacks the dog. Those parents effectively murdered a rare and precious species of animal, and the other week that woman with the out of control dog in the park, effectively put numerous kids in hospital in serious condition. Adults need to start feeling the full force of the law when they are responsible for anything and do an absolutely terrible job of controlling it.

[Neil Weaver]

You don't know how fast the tranquiliser will act and what damage the Gorilla may do to the child in that time.

Exactly Mr Meat. Several minutes for it to take effect on the report I heard.

[Paul]

Reading the press and social media it's good to discover few, if any, other parents have ever lost sight of or control of a child. No doubt no one else has ever had to grab a child which tried to rush across a road, stand to close to a platform edge. Kids push boundaries, they see no danger and sometimes it goes badly wrong.

It's also good to know the zoo has adequate security to prevent young children entering an enclosure containing dangerous animals. Clearly every consideration to every possibility has been covered in safety assessments.

If the child had been killed? Where would the outrage be directed? If a tranquilliser had been used and a confused gorilla mauls the child to death?

Once the parents have been jailed I imagine placing their kids in state care will help their development significantly.

[ABBEY]

People get blown up every day , people get murdered every day , people die every day but a monkey gets killed and this board is in bits .

I don't know the hows or whys the kid ended up there but someone asked if you've ever lost a child in your care and I did .my lad let go of my hand (3 or 4 years old)at the Liverpool game and in the split second he disappeared, it was THE most scariest thing that's EVER happened to me . Luckily John new sham locked ewood down and after 10 mins he was found .

Like I said I have not seen how he got there but if it was a simple thing like that then the parents are blameless if not then throw the book at them .

[Norbert Rassragr]

When you see the video, the gorilla seems curious rather than aggressive. If you are old enough, you may remember Jambo in the Jersey zoo, or Koko who looks after kittens in San Francisco. Gorillas are not just massive brutes (that's chimpanzees), However, this was America, and they probably couldn't be bothered to fly to Zimbabwe this summer.

[adopted scouser]

People get blown up every day , people get murdered every day , people die every day but a monkey gets killed and this board is in bits .

I don't know the hows or whys the kid ended up there but someone asked if you've ever lost a child in your care and I did .my lad let go of my hand (3 or 4 years old)at the Liverpool game and in the split second he disappeared, it was THE most scariest thing that's EVER happened to me . Luckily John new sham locked ewood down and after 10 mins he was found .

Like I said I have not seen how he got there but if it was a simple thing like that then the parents are blameless if not then throw the book at them .

[Steve Kean's Hypnotoad]

Reading the press and social media it's good to discover few, if any, other parents have ever lost sight of or control of a child. No doubt no one else has ever had to grab a child which tried to rush across a road, stand to close to a platform edge. Kids push boundaries, they see no danger and sometimes it goes badly wrong.

It's also good to know the zoo has adequate security to prevent young children entering an enclosure containing dangerous animals. Clearly every consideration to every possibility has been covered in safety assessments.

If the child had been killed? Where would the outrage be directed? If a tranquilliser had been used and a confused gorilla mauls the child to death?

Once the parents have been jailed I imagine placing their kids in state care will help their development significantly.

And how many examples are there of idiot parents sitting their child on the edge of an enclosure fence at zoos to get a better view, or actually dangling them into the enclosure? Fair enough, maybe every incident should be taken on its own merit. There are plenty of kids who push boundaries. There are also plenty of parents who are too lazy to set boundaries, too lazy to even bother checking on what their kid is doing or just prone to idiotic behaviour themselves so they end up being as bad the kid.

If the child had been killed I'd imagine the outrage would have been directed at the zoo, so yeah you've got a point about safety requirements. Maybe future visitors at all zoos will have to see the animals through the obstruction of a fortified, high fence in future because a few idiot parents are moronically unaware that they're in a potentially dangerous environment where they have to check on their kids now and again to make sure they're not climbing over fences.

Right, and nobody ever has any relatives to help out in situations like that do they not? I'd imagine state care would probably provide better parenting than those 2. Maybe you're right though, in which case the parents should receive a huge fine over a number of years instead, to be given by the government to the zoo to help them replace the significant loss. Letting them off does absolutely nothing to encourage future better behaviour by parents at zoos.

[Steve Kean's Hypnotoad]

People get blown up every day , people get murdered every day , people die every day but a monkey gets killed and this board is in bits .

People have increased in population from about 1 million to about 7 billion since the evolution of the human. The UN medium prediction is that will reach 10 billion by 2100, but with the current migration trend (the third world moving to the first world and then continuing to have just as many kids), I suspect the high UN prediction will be more accurate, which is 16 billion by 2100. There's 2 factors which likely drive people's thought processes on assigning importance to a creature. The more there are of them, the less important each one is (e.g. ants). But also the more intelligent one is, the more important it is. I certainly rank the importance of a human over the importance of any dog, which is why I can't stand dog owners in this country who do the opposite and prioritise the well-being of their pet over the well-being of others (and there are a heck of a lot around who think like that). But that's because there are at least 500 million dogs on the planet.

There are 100,000 gorillas left because we've killed almost all of them, through our own overpopulation and wrecking their habitat, or actually just by shooting them for various reasons. At this point personally I rank rare species on about the same level as humans, except unlike wars and terrorists which we can't control, we can pretty easily control whether we kill rare animals. So yeah I get very annoyed when one is killed for either no reason or an extremely selfish, neglectful or stupid reason.

[Paul]

The point is SKH we know nothing about these parents but you and thousands of others have chosen to judge them.

Like ABBEY I've "lost" a child for a few minutes in M&S. It happens, no matter how good or caring the parents.

[Amo]

Paul makes a good point.

That guy who tried to commit suicide in lion enclosure, however, should've been left to it.

[jim mk2]

Yup, let's blame the parents, the zoo

People have increased in population from about 1 million to about 7 billion since the evolution of the human. The UN medium prediction is that will reach 10 billion by 2100, but with the current migration trend (the third world moving to the first world and then continuing to have just as many kids), I suspect the high UN prediction will be more accurate, which is 16 billion by 2100. There's 2 factors which likely drive people's thought processes on assigning importance to a creature. The more there are of them, the less important each one is (e.g. ants). But also the more intelligent one is, the more important it is. I certainly rank the importance of a human over the importance of any dog, which is why I can't stand dog owners in this country who do the opposite and prioritise the well-being of their pet over the well-being of others (and there are a heck of a lot around who think like that). But that's because there are at least 500 million dogs on the planet.

There are 100,000 gorillas left because we've killed almost all of them, through our own overpopulation and wrecking their habitat, or actually just by shooting them for various reasons. At this point personally I rank rare species on about the same level as humans, except unlike wars and terrorists which we can't control, we can pretty easily control whether we kill rare animals. So yeah I get very annoyed when one is killed for either no reason or an extremely selfish, neglectful or stupid reason.

Probably this contributor's most idiotic post yet - which is quite an achievement for him.

[Steve Kean's Hypnotoad]

Yup, let's blame the parents, the zoo

Probably this contributor's most idiotic post yet - which is quite an achievement for him.

I could complain to a moderator about you but it seems somewhat cowardly and time consuming, so I'll just get both our posts deleted instead. You're a complete f****** t***** mate and I'm at a loss to explain why you haven't been banned permanently when all you do is try to rile people up. I'm no angel on here but every time we have an argument and it finishes, you start it up again with a post like that. You're a complete @#/?.

[jim mk2]

What do you expect when you equate an animal's life to that of a human being and claim a dangerous animal was "killed for no reason etc etc " when it could have snuffed out the life of a child in an instant ? I'd like to think you're either being provocative for the sake it and don't genuinely believe what you are saying but if the latter is the case then you need help.

[Norbert Rassragr]

A person can snuff out the life of a child, so using that logic anyone who goes near a school should be shot just in case they're like the Soham murderer guy. This would be because people statistically kill many more people than gorillas.

[Steve Kean's Hypnotoad]

What do you expect when you equate an animal's life to that of a human being and claim a dangerous animal was "killed for no reason etc etc " when it could have snuffed out the life of a child in an instant ? I'd like to think you're either being provocative for the sake it and don't genuinely believe what you are saying but if the latter is the case then you need help.

I don't give a damn what you think about my opinion. I think virtually every single one of your opinions are the product of a moronic, self-important, communist prat with absolutely no ability whatsoever to converse with people in anything approaching a decent manner. I think you're a sarcastic, rude, utterly disagreeable piece of work and do my absolute best to ignore the verbal vomit you serve up on here.

So given that, if you disagree with me you can post that you disagree or you can just ignore it. If you think disagreeing with me gives you the right to insult me then you can stick your contribution up your own backside.

[jim mk2]

Lovely.

[T J Hooker]

The point is SKH we know nothing about these parents but you and thousands of others have chosen to judge them.

Like ABBEY I've "lost" a child for a few minutes in M&S. It happens, no matter how good or caring the parents.

Little different loosing your kid for a few minutes in a supermarket where there's not many risks than it is to loosing them in a zoo where they could get into all sorts of trouble, that said this is still a bizarre and extreme case, I haven't looked into the details but surely it just shouldn't have been possible for a little kid(or anybody) to get in there with such a dangerous animal, I don't know enough about what happened to judge but my instinctive target to blame would be the zoo.

[T J Hooker]

What do you expect when you equate an animal's life to that of a human being and claim a dangerous animal was "killed for no reason etc etc " when it could have snuffed out the life of a child in an instant ? I'd like to think you're either being provocative for the sake it and don't genuinely believe what you are saying but if the latter is the case then you need help.

to me it read like hew was speaking more about apes(or other endangered animal) as a species and saying that we should be doing all we can to protect them

Which I agree with, although i'm not religious I always feel that it should be human kinds responsibility as top dogs on earth(currently) to protect all that lives on it when possible

(and no i'm not a vegan or vegetarian and I do know how much of an hypocrite that makes me)

[ABBEY]

Little different loosing your kid for a few minutes in a supermarket where there's not many risks than it is to loosing them in a zoo where they could get into all sorts of trouble, that said this is still a bizarre and extreme case, I haven't looked into the details but surely it just shouldn't have been possible for a little kid(or anybody) to get in there with such a dangerous animal, I don't know enough about what happened to judge but my instinctive target to blame would be the zoo.

I take it you don't have kids

[Stuart]

I don't give a damn what you think about my opinion. I think virtually every single one of your opinions are the product of a moronic, self-important, communist prat with absolutely no ability whatsoever to converse with people in anything approaching a decent manner. I think you're a sarcastic, rude, utterly disagreeable piece of work and do my absolute best to ignore the verbal vomit you serve up on here.

So given that, if you disagree with me you can post that you disagree or you can just ignore it. If you think disagreeing with me gives you the right to insult me then you can stick your contribution up your own backside.

I had a tear in my eye reading that. Beautiful.

[T J Hooker]

I take it you don't have kids

I take it you struggled to keep track of yours.

P.s. i do have 5 younger brothers and sisters though if that's good enough for you.

[ABBEY]

I take it you struggled to keep track of yours.

P.s. i do have 5 younger brothers and sisters though if that's good enough for you.

That first bit shows what nasty @#/? you really are .

I have brothers and sisters it's nothing like having your own you really are a nasty piece of @#/?

[yoda]

I had a tear in my eye reading that. Beautiful.

It should be in message board gold that's for sure

[T J Hooker]

No abby im really not, but you just never learn, dont give it, if you can't take it.

I'm sorry if i touched on one of your nuuuuumerous raw nerves though.