Dallas Zoo gorilla tragedy

[Retic chic]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Southwest/03/19/gorilla.rampage.ap/index.html

[JeffT]

Ah that totally sucks. I dont know why they wouldnt tranqualize it instead of shoot it...

[Scales Zoo]

Gorilla Fund International, said police could have tried to contain the gorilla with nonfatal techniques, including using rubber bullets or cornering it with a wall of 15-20 people, preferably keepers the animal recognized.

O.K, like they could find 20 people who would volunteer to corner a huge mad gorilla.

Ryan

[sketchy4]

yeah that does suck. but who in their right mind would want to surround a gorilla that has twice the strength and power that you do.

[SaIiLdVaEnR]

It's probably quite a bit more than twice the strength.

Aidan

[Scales Zoo]

I've seen Elephant's go nuts on T.V a few times, but I don't think I've ever seen a big male gorilla go ape, uh, well. I'm not saying I'd want to see a Gorilla take around out of 15 or 20 people who were cornering it - but I imagine even if they avoided the huge teeth, the large hands and feet could hand out quite a pummelling, and cause injuries like a car accident would.

Ryan

[CONCEPT03]

it sucks they had to shoot it but i would like to see someone shoot it with rubber bullets and live. the police did what they had to to protect themselves and the visitors

[sketchy4]

this is a bit off topic but what would you rather be shot with? rubber bullets or pepper balls?

[Mike177]

the dallas zoo is already in a low on cash and i dont think this is going to help them out, i heard that they are giveing away free tickets to try to get people to go back

[JonD]

Originally posted by Scales Zoo
O.K, like they could find 20 people who would volunteer to corner a huge mad gorilla.

Ryan
LOL or have someone dress like a female Gorilla, with the possibility of being violated!!!:D

[Double J]

20 people could not detain a gorilla bare handed. It is just not possible. Remember... the upper body strength of a gorilla is immense.... Though they are terrestrial quadrapeds.... their arms are still made for lifting themselves into trees. This requires immense strength.. especaily condiering their weght (adult males are 180 lbs)
Also...... there was far too quick of a reaction on the part of the police officers. 20 feet away from an "angry gorilla" is quite a distance. Gorillas put on more of a show than an full fledged assault....... they will run at you baring teeth.. but this is a threat, and is instead mean't to drive you away. If you back down.. or show signs of submission, the gorilla will ease up. Police are not proplery trained to know and read gorilla behaviour.... though they were "just doing their job"...... I don't think it was their place to shoot with guns to begin with. I am sure there were tranquilizers on hand of some sort.... there had to have been. Thier job was to get people to safety.... that is rounding them up, and getting them somewhere safe. These animals are not like a rabid pitbull...... they are far too rare to be shot like an armed robber. I think the situation was handled wrong.... instead.. there should have been protocols in place in case this happened. If there were, they certainly were not followed.
Tomorrow.... I will talk to my human evolution prof... she is a primatologist... I will get her PhD opinion on the matter and get back to you.
Double J

[MouseKilla]

I'm not usually one to defend cops (especially ones that wear cowboy hats) but in this situation I would have shot the gorrilla in a heartbeat.

In the Toronto Star article the representative from the zoo didn't accept the blame for the animal escaping, he tried to make it sound like it was the fault of the crowd of people around the cage.

"We believe he was taunted and tormented by a group of children. We have scoured the area and we can't see any signs at all of any wrongdoing on our part, such as a door left unlocked. We honestly don't know how he got out."

WHAT?? Here's a sign of wrongdoing: THE GORRILLA GOT OUT! We all keep animals here, who's fault is it if your 20 foot retic gets out of his cage? How can you blame a bunch of kids? Did the kids let the beast out?? Talk about BS! It's totally, 100 percent the zoo's fault this whole thing happened, not the kids and not the cops.

The cops had to worry about making sure the animal didn't hurt any MORE people, they didn't have time to think of preserving endangered wildlife, the creature had already mauled at least one toddler.

As for tranquilizing the animal, the zoo staff had the period of time between the escape and the arrival of the cops to do that themselves. They didn't have the stuff close enough at hand to use it before the cops did what they had to do to prevent people from being killed by a dangerous, escaped animal and as a result the animal is now dead. Who's responsibility is it to keep gorrilla tranquilizers handy? Seems to me that's the zoo's department, not the cop's.

I would hate to think about how secure their other enclosures are if they can't find a single thing wrong with one that obviously has gorrilla sized flaw. That zoo should be shut down until someone who knows what they're doing can audit the place and the necessary improvements are made and the idiots in charge are fired and replaced with competent people.

[brandi]

very sad, but i agree with mousekilla. If one of our animals escape it is our own fault, and we know it. if one of us gets bit handling a venomous animal, we all know we are responsible, because we accepted that risk. A zoo is not different.

Double J, you brought up a lot of good points, but the problem with "ifs" is they are just that, "ifs" and not "were". Tranquillizers were not immediately on hand, or used in time, or people didn't know how to use them. A thorough audit does need to be done, but that doesn't fix what happend due to human negligence. As far as the gorilla just showing agression, or bluffing, i really don't think grabbing a kid in its mouth qualifies as "bluffing".

And for the "20 foot" thing, if anything the officers waited too long. I'm told Canada has pretty strict gun laws, but if you've ever had law enforcement or concealed weapons training you will learn the "21 foot rule". basically it shows that a human being, armed only with a knife, can close 21 feet and deliver a wound before an armed person can draw their weapon and fire. I don't know what the gorilla/human rate of speed is, but if i was that officer i would not have waited around to figure it out.

[anders_240sx]

The gorillas parents are Charles and from the Toronto Zoo... since Josephine cannot produce milk, the gorilla was hand fed. So I think there is a lot more than simply the gorilla escaping .... the door had to be unlocked... besides its not like gorillas to go nuts .... typically when they escape, they quickly go back into the comforts of their cage. I do fully blame the police for killing the gorilla, however, the zoo should have reacted much faster to ensure the gorilla was tranquilized ... its all based on opinion

[Cake]

I think there are alot of misconceptions regrading gorilla behaviour. Gorilla's are by nature extremelly teritorial and will protect themselves with force if they feel threatened. When he broke free of his enclosure and was faced with 20 or so people looking at him he perceived all of them as threats. Most likely people began to scream, run away, yell, cry, ect you know the natural human way to react to something they do not understand, or fear. These loud noises and lots of frantic movement would have freaked the gorrila out, and emediatly put him on the defensive.

Had everyone relaxed and not freaked out, odds are he would have gone into an aggresive display of charging, cheast beating, and vocalizations, showing his teeth, nothing to serious.

I do not mean to put the blame on the people observing the situation, as it is not thier fault that the gorilla got out, but i think what the gorilla did was a perfectly natural reaction to being in a threatening situation. The blame for the situation must squarely be placed on the Dallas Zoo.

As for the cops shooting the gorilla, well i wasn't there so i cant say if it was warrented or not. Apparently the Zoo keepers were on their way to get tranqs to take it down, but if the gorilla was chomping on a kids head then id have to say they did what was necessary.

Reports say that the kids were teasing him and this would have prevoked agressive behavior on the gorillas part. I think that this is a lesson learned in that we need to show the respect that these 300lbs animals deserve. To many times have i seen kids at the zoo throwing things into enclosures or pushing sticks into cages right infront of their parents and them saying nothing to them, ive approached several of them asking them to stop, explaining that they are bothering the animals. The Toronto Zoo lost an Orangutan to people throwing oreo's into the enclosure 5-10 years ago.

[Darren179]

you see 15-20 regular men can not handle the gorrila but why didnt they just call in a favour from the "govenor". Did anyone see arnold in t3 he could do it... he is a cyborg you know.

[K1LOS]

Indeed, the zoo is completely at fault for the escape of the gorilla. Unfortunate that the zoo hadn't thought out a plan and had tranq's close by. The cops did what they felt was just, and in their mind ended a bad situation.

However, in my probably not widely accepted way of thinking, I'd say the life of one gorilla is worth that of several humans. People are going to be around for a LONG time and we are in no real danger. Gorilla's however, are extremely at risk. Not only was the life of the gorilla in the zoo taken, but where is this zoo going to get another gorilla to replace it? I really hope they don't take a second life of an endangered species, and capture one from the wild.

anybody know if there are any gorilla's being placed back into the wild through breeding programs and the like?

Geoff

[Cake]

They most certainly will not be taking one out of the wild. There are captive breeding programs for most primates and all of the great apes. The one that was shot was born at the Toronto zoo.

As far as i know Gorilla re-introduction programs do not work, gorillas are highly social animals and live in close knit family troups, it is extremely difficult to introduce an adult gorilla to a troup even in captivity where conditions can be controlled, in the wild a new gorilla would most likely be severly wounded or even killed by the first troup they ran into. Even introductions of baby gorilla's in capivity are hit or miss. The toronto zoo tried unsuccessfully to introduce a 1 year old back around 2000 to their troup.

[K1LOS]

what about introducing several individuals together, and allowing them to form their own troup?

Geoff

[MouseKilla]

Originally posted by K1LOS

However, in my probably not widely accepted way of thinking, I'd say the life of one gorilla is worth that of several humans. People are going to be around for a LONG time and we are in no real danger. Gorilla's however, are extremely at risk

Geoff

Alright, I'll bite on that bait. lol!

I have never been able to understand this point of view though I have heard it before. The whole concept of placing equal or greater value on the life of an animal, endangered or not, as you would on the life of a human is somewhat offensive to me. It would be more offensive if it wasn't so silly.

The main difficulty I have with this is that when you don't put some forms of life on a higher level than others and say that all forms of life are of equal value you have, philosophically and morally, painted yourself into a corner.

In this example it's easy to think that maybe the world can spare a human or two to protect this rare and valuable animal. But if you extend this logic or brand of morality then it becomes equally true that humans have no more right to live than cattle, therefore humans should not eat meat from ANY animal, or hunt or set rodent traps. There are all kinds of people who feel this way, my opinion on that aside let's extend the same logic one step further.

If people are no more entitled to live than cattle then how is it they are more entitled to live than plants or insects or germs, bacteria or cancers for that matter? Are all these not also forms of life? Can you see how the whole idea begins to self-destruct because it fails to distiguish between different forms of life?

The fact is that nature itself embraces the idea that some forms of life are inherently more valuable than others. More evolved forms of life feed on less evolved forms of life, it's brutal and cruel but it's the only way.

I don't know about anyone else but I put human life on a higher level than the life of a cancer cell. I would gladly kill several million cancer cells to save the life of one human, in fact we call the doctors who do this things like "miracle worker" and "hero" not "murderer". I would also end the lives of many vegetables to sustain a single human life, same goes for insects, rodents, poultry, cattle and YES even endangered gorrillas. I say if a human life is at risk then we should kill the LAST gorrilla if we have to despite the fact that humans aren't among the endangered species.

[Cruciform]

The value of life is relative :)

There are people I would die to save, and there are others I leave hanging by their fingers from the edge of a cliff (yes, I'm petty).

The concept of placing value on non-human life seems to have come about from the fact that we as a species are no longer spending every waking minute fighting for survival. It used to be that creatures fit into two categories: prey and predator.

Then we learned a bit about farming and we got a third type of animal, the tool.

And we still continue to evolve in how we deal with animals. Although often too slowly to save many species.


As for the threat of the Gorilla, he posed a threat of injury but the chances of him actually killing someone were pretty remote. They'll knock you stupid but they're not mindless killing machines. The cops don't know that though. They have to protect the public, and also avoid getting sued because just by letting it live one minute longer and smacking someone around they put the city at an even greater risk of liability.

When it comes to city budgets the life of a single gorilla, or a taxpayer for that matter, means little or nothing.

[Bighead]

Originally posted by K1LOS
However, in my probably not widely accepted way of thinking, I'd say the life of one gorilla is worth that of several humans. People are going to be around for a LONG time and we are in no real danger.

Geoff, be assured, I wasn't ofended and have no beef with you, but I have a sinking feeling that you wouldn't have jumped between the Gorilla and the cops so he could eat you and buy himself some time for the tranquilizers to show up.
There are very few people who are even willing to give there life for another human being, let alone one they've never met.

[Bighead]

Originally posted by Cruciform
As for the threat of the Gorilla, he posed a threat of injury but the chances of him actually killing someone were pretty remote. They'll knock you stupid but they're not mindless killing machines. The cops don't know that though. They have to protect the public, and also avoid getting sued because just by letting it live one minute longer and smacking someone around they put the city at an even greater risk of liability.

I wouldn't have thought twice about shooting the Gorilla if it had my 3 year old child's head in it's mouth. I think it's a terrible tragedy for the Gorilla and the zoo, but I certainly don't blame the cops for what they did.

[Lisa]

It's sad, and I've heard that initial reports were that the gorillia wasn't rampaging...

[Cake]

KILOS,

To answer your question about introducing a family troup into the wild. You need to understand a little about the troup structure.

A family troup consist's of one mature male silverback, several unrelated mature females, and the juvenile offspring. These are tight knit groups and outsiders are frowned upon. Any male offspring once mature, must either fight the reining silverback or leave the troup.

Gorilla's mature around age 10. So the mature members must be raised for 10 years in captivity. You cannot accurately simulate the wild environment for these animals in captivity and their lifes necessities will be provided by humans. So the gorilla's will learn that humans will provide them with food, water, etc. Wild animals thinking that humans will give them food is not a good thing.

Gorilla's also move in regards to the dry and rainy seasons in the lowlands, and move in accordance with where fruit is ripening. These are learned activities and frequently the same troups will visit the same tree's just as the fruit on them is ripening year after year. These are learned behaviours during the first few years of life. Being raised in captivity cannot teach these necessary life skills to gorillas.

There has been success in taking orphaned young animals and releasing them into controlled environments. However these animals still require humans to provide them with food, as they are unable to find sufficient food on their own. There are very good programs for orangutans in indonesia and for chimps in Africa, in controlled environments.

[MouseKilla]

I wonder then what the point is of breeding these animals in captivity if they can never be returned to the wild. Obviously preserving a species that can only exist in zoos because their natural habitat no longer exists or the captive bred animals will not adapt to living in the wild is useless in an ecological sense.

Is the idea to keep these otherwise extinct creatures alive until we find a way to reintegrate them into the wild? Or are we just keeping them around to remind ourselves of the role we humans may have played in putting these animals at such risk?

[Scales Zoo]

If they may go extinct in the wild, it would be nice for zoos to have figured out how to repeatedly breed them, and have enough animals in the program so that our grand kids don't have to look at pictures of gorillas some day when there are none left.

Ryan

[C.m.pyrrhus]

Virtually all wild animals are not truly able to be reintroduced into the wild in the perfect sence. From elephants to tigers there are many problems that arise, each with there own specific problems that are still needing to be looked at. Therefore, man is trying to do it's best at finding ways to preserve what is left and hoping that someday there may be a better future for these beasts. There are a few success stories in the reintroduction of some wild animals, yet to many end up much like the gorillas as discussed here.

Basically, the only thing we are left to do is place them in zoos and other such programs, or just let them go extinct. I highly doubt that man will give his place on earth for them to thrive naturally. At least until we start to go extinct....