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When you take your small children to a public place, sorry, but you SHOULD be on watch tower duty. They're your children and your responsibility. It's no one else's job to monitor your kids' safety while you're "distracted," by your phone, picking boogers, or anything else. It's YOUR job. If you cannot manage to keep your children under control in public, then keep them at home. Too many people think that strangers in public places are obligated to tolerate their out of control brats and want to get indignant when they see that not everybody thinks their precious darling is as adorable as they do.
And we're not talking about a kid slipped out of his mother's grasp and tumbled accidentally into an enclosure, or who suddenly darted off and knocked someone over. This kid managed to climb through barriers, shrubbery, DELIBERATELY, then drop 12 feet into a moat while his mother was in a daze somewhere. And even though it's "just" a gorilla, this living creature lost his life because of her negligence.
Nope, nope, nope.
And yes, a 4 year old climbed through all of that DELIBERATELY. He needs his butt wooped. He knew full well what he was doing, he's responsible for not obeying his mother's orders to not do any of that. To the extent that he's OK but he got the snot scared out of him, GOOD. He full well DESERVED what he got, I say.
Of course it is the parent's ultimate responsibility, not someone else's. The point is to be REASONABLE and to understand that even when a parent makes reasonable efforts things can still occur and for others to not be all snotty and judgmental thinking they would do better when in all likelihood they would not. Like the free range lady said, years ago people would've been sympathetic understanding that kids can be stubborn, today the expectations of parenting are ridiculous. And don't get me started on discipline, because if a parent does discipline there's always that self-righteous jerk who thinks ANY form of discipline is "abuse" and is all too eager to pull out their phone and call social services.
Either way, haters are going to hate. Let them.
And yes, I hold the 4 year old responsible somewhat, especially if it's as you yourself say and he DELIBERATELY went through all of that. He needs his butt whooped. To the extent that he is OK but nonetheless got the snot scared out of him, I say GOOD. It serves him right, I say. He full well deserved what happened to him for not doing as his mother said (assuming she was clear and reasonably vigilant with her instruction and oversight).
The primary sources in that wiki article are cited, and you can look them up and read them. Your link was to an undergraduate anthropology lecture which gives no author name and which cites no primary references, and which treats the subject in a very cursory way. Decide for yourself which is more reliable.
Your postings in this thread have made it clear you know very little about animal behavior, and hold a rather romanticized view of their actions. Real animals are more complex than that, and not romantic at all. The more intelligent species especially (such as gorillas) can be deliberately downright nasty. Check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
Animals aren't worse than us. But they aren't better than us, either.
Sorry the Harvard link didn't do it for you. Try this one.
Again it is NOT common for animals to do this. Period. Yes, animals can be nasty but none so much as humans, that's fact not romantic.
Infanticide by mothers is a rare and counterintuitive event. Contrary to infanticide by individuals other than the mother (e.g. males wanting to reproduce with the mother or females wanting to get rid of competitors), the adaptive value of maternal infanticide is unclear. Among primates, it is most common in humans (an average of 34 cases a year in the US) and callitrichids. It might be one of the negative consequences of cooperative breeding, whereby a mother judges her infant as ‘undesirable’ and requiring a greater investment than the mother is willing or able to provide. Undesirability can simply be due to unfortunate timing rather than to any defects of the infant. In humans, for example, undesirable characteristics that have been linked to maternal infanticide/neglect have been sex, when one gender is favored over the other; presence of many older siblings; young age of the mother; poor health; or lack of paternal contribution to child care. In the few callitrichid examples available, maternal infanticide also seemed to be related to a scarcity of male helpers at a time when more than one female was breeding in the group. Maternal infanticide can thus be considered adaptive if the infant has low reproductive value or low survival chances, and if terminating investment in it increases either the mother’s future reproductive chances or her current investment in other offspring. In other apes, male infanticide is the most common and has been documented in particular after group takeovers in gorillas, and during aggressive inter-group encounters in chimpanzees. Female infanticide is less common, and is sometimes considered pathological or deviant behavior. Maternal infanticide is extremely rare in non-human primates.
What exactly are you referring to when you say "this"? Infanticide? That's dirt common among many species. Maternal infanticide specifically? Much less common (and not really relevant to the zoo incident we are discussing, as the gorilla in question was male), but still well documented in several species of mammals and birds. Nonpredatory violence in general, to conspecifics or directed against other species? Again, common as dirt.
Quote:
Yes, animals can be nasty but none so much as humans, that's fact not romantic.
Nope, it's not fact, merely your romantic opinion. Do yourself a favor and read the link I provided to the Gombe Chimp War, which documents how male chimps who'd known each other all their lives began brutally killing each other in horrific attacks while seemingly taking pleasure in each act of slaughter, simply because one over-large community split into two. It's basically nonhuman animals committing genocide. If that doesn't qualify in your eyes as behavior every bit as as nasty as what humans engage in, then what would?
And yes, a 4 year old climbed through all of that DELIBERATELY. He needs his butt wooped. He knew full well what he was doing, he's responsible for not obeying his mother's orders to not do any of that. To the extent that he's OK but he got the snot scared out of him, GOOD. He full well DESERVED what he got, I say.
Yes, he deliberately climbed the barriers, but do you really think a 4 year old understood the consequences of his actions?
The Derkosh family suffered a terrible loss when their young son, Maddox, was dropped into a wild African painted dog pen by his mother, who was holding him over the railing so he could "get a better view". This was in Pittsburgh and occurred a couple of Novembers ago. Instead of becoming a pariah for irresponsibly dropping her son to his gruesome death she "grieved" by joining her husband in a lawsuit against the Pittsburgh Zoo, from which they received a settlement.
Apparently we're now in a society where idiots get rewarded, so don't be shocked if not only this mother is NOT held accountable for her inattentiveness BUT ALSO if she sues the ZOO for negligence and receives a hefty payday.
I don't know how old you are, but I remember the 1950s. People had very large families compared to today. For instance, I'm one of seven kids. Many people had more.
Walking around to do shopping, it was pretty standard practice to have kids on leashes. One mother just couldn't keep up with five little kids all by herself. No one thought it was odd.
I, too, am old enough to remember. Don't remember anyone with seversal on a leash but, when I was young, do recall many parents used them for even one child. As a kid, I always thought it a little odd - thought maybe there was something wrong with the child.
Frankly, if one has a hyperactive uncontrollable child, a leash isn't the worst way to control him when out in public.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elliedeee
Nobody knows how the gorilla would have behaved. Not me, not you, not professionals. Nobody. Yes, it didn't kill the child but nobody can say for certainty that it wouldn't have killed the child 5 mins. later or killed the boy if they tried to remove him, or even killed whomever tried to remove the child. The gorilla was stressed because it had this little being in it's enclosure and all the people up top were screaming. It even looked confused in the video.
What other option were you considering? Leave the child with the gorilla until the gorilla get's tired of it?
I'm pro animal but I think in this case the zoo really had no choice.
Absolutely. As it is, the zoo will probably still get sued what with all the we-know-better armchair quarterbacking going on. In 38 years, that zoo has never experienced an incident like this. Nothing is foolproof.
T'was a magnificent and gorgeous animal that was shot - but consider the hue and cry if the child had been killed. Gorilla was dragging the kid around like a rag doll, kid's head was being hit against concrete. Parents will need to monitor him for a while for brain injury.
Yes, he deliberately climbed the barriers, but do you really think a 4 year old understood the consequences of his actions?
There are plenty of adults who don't understand the consequences of their actions, but in our egalitarian, security-obsessed, Politically Correct society, we value them, protect them. and shield them as much as those who do.
It wasn't always so. and in fairness. wasn't that long ago that we paid a much heavier price; the death toll in fires and other accidents, some as recently as the Seventies, are mute testimony to that. But the need for safety in public venues sometimes calls for a forceful personality, and until fairly recently, that meant a mature male -- usually the favorite scapegoat among a culture that has been saturated with a little too much Disney-ism.
Thankfully, the actual number of casualties is a lot lower.
Here's an interesting view of what happened. This version talks about how the mom just turned away for a second to take a picture when the boy disappeared. Maybe she should have closer attention to her son who had been nagging her to let him go into the water rather than taking her eyes off him. The kid seemed to have taken that as an opportunity to do what he wanted to do.
I'm so sad about this Gorilla losing her/his life over this saga. Of course I'm happy the child is safe but the parents should face neglect charges or endangering their child due to neglect or something like that.
This is outrageous that parents can't watch and hold their little child by the hand to avoid this from happening. Unless the ZOO was so careless that it is so easy to get into the gorilla habitat it looks like the child had said he wanted to go to the gorilla.
That on itself sounds like a weird statement to me coming from a child. Maybe the mom or dad has said "wouldn't you like it to be with the gorilla" like many kids will hear how parents love to see the gorillas and how cute they are.... behind a fence or very thick safety glass!
Any normal parent will explain that gorillas are very dangerous animals due to the strength they have.
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Try this one. 
