To think that the response to animal killings is disproportionate to everything else going on in the world right now?

[littlemisseatsherfeelings]

Straight off I feel obliged to lay a disclaimer down to say I agree that the killing of the gorilla was really very sad and a complete waste of already endangered life. I thought the same when the killing of Cecil the lion got a hyper response as well. I think animal lovers could think I was being heartless if I didn't acknowledge this, and it really is sad.

That said - I NEVER see this kind of reaction about some truly horrific things going on EVERY day around the world. To humans. Our own kind. Day after day after day people are losing their lives. It is brutal. The refugee crisis, the conflicts in Africa, South America, just so much bloody war. Yet so few seem willing to talk about it.

You don't see the same numbers on petitions (430,000 for the gorilla when I checked a short while ago), you don't see as many long impassioned status rants on Facebook. It's just very awkward to start a conversation about the devastation to humankind right now, whether it is online, in the pub or wherever. But an animal gets killed and ALL HELL breaks loose. Celebrities shouting about their horror. The main news headlines full of it.

I get it to an extent. It's escapism. No one wants to face the reality of babies being burned in a war they didn't choose to be born into. Torture in prisons, FGM. The list goes on. It's depressing.

After sharing some stories about the war in the Middle East last year, and my distress at what I was seeing, the response on Facebook was very very quiet. I got a few comments that it made people uncomfortable. So I stopped doing it. But I read about the goings on in our world every day, my heart aches for what I am seeing and yet I feel like I have no one to talk to about this stuff. Like there's a stigma for wanting to enter into a discussion about it.

So back to my question, is it just me who thinks the reaction to animal stories is always disproportionate? Why can't we feel passion for other humans the way we do to one single animal we have never met or engaged with?

Leigh - are you an ex-manager of a zoo?

And you're the experienced ex-manager of a zoo? With professional knowledge of animal behaviour? You know that there was no staff training in place? Or is this all conjecture based on what you think you 'know'?

Really, as I asked before, explain why you, with what I presume to be no professional experience of zoo-keeping, are more knowledgable and better equipped to handle this incident than the professionals who dealt with the situation?

Unless you have any legitimate experience in this area it's narcissistic and foolish to insist that you 'know better', isn't it?

What I don't understand is the massive public crying when a celebrity they've never met dies.
It's sad, of course, but the mass hysteria is really strange sometimes.

People are upset about endangered animals being killed senselessly because once they've gone they've gone and it's symptomatic of the massive decline in Earth resources and destruction of the enviromenent.

Leigh I don't "despise animal lovers" or ridicule them.

Where on earth do you get that idea from?

I was merely reflecting on the passion showed by thousands of people suggesting this boy's life was worth less than the orangatans and hoping they applied that same sentiment to the rest of their lives.

Well this has become a discussion about who was in the right or wrong and whether the animal should have been killed or not - which is not what I was asking, I can see there are already other threads about that.

I think the contributions about the human perspective have been really interesting for me, and that is what I was trying to understand.

Louche Lady I would've been with you on Cecil but I hadn't yet found MN :)

I will not list the ways I have contributed my time, money and possessions to justify my belief that hundreds of thousands of innocent human lives are more valuable to me than 1 animal. I know I am doing something. No it is not enough, the work of 1 will never be enough. Heck the work of thousands isn't enough at the moment, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try, or that we shouldn't value those lives, even if we are seeing so much of it that it's making some people numb.

If you curl up and cry about the loss of one animal but not about thousands of dead children, there's something on the fritz inside of you.

Actually yes, I have worked in a zoo and on a game park before. I also completed a course in order to work in the zoo. But that's not where I had the operational management experience. I live in Africa where we have game parks all over so I'm not adverse as to how animals operate.

I know that gorillas are wild and temperamental but I also do think it's bad management not to have action plans in place. If the action place is to shoot an animal then they should have IMMEDIATELY done that. Not faff around for ages deciding what to do causing more distress for the child and gorilla. I have been involved in small projects with animals.

But how long between therm raised and the shot?

I wonder how many people there had a gun (visitors aside).

I also don't despise animal lovers, I just question their position sometimes, there's a difference.

Another question is why did the mother call the police? I watched that on TV this morning unless I misunderstood who she was calling. Surely the management of the zoo should have been sorting it out and making the call. It just doesn't make sense to me

I used to work somewhere that had wrongly been put up on a website as a busines that funded and supported a vivisection lab. I refused to open the mail.

There are are some seriously obsessed/batshit stupid people out there.

I'm guessing it was quicker to call 911 than to dig out the zoo's phone number.

Why is it that it took them ten minutes to decide on a plan.

I was under the impression from what I read that in that ten minutes they were trying to lure him away from the child. The two females went immediately, but he ignored. Which, combined with his increasingly agitated state, is why they made the decision they did.

Personally, I don't think the child should have been able to get in their in the first place.

What Handsome said. What's quicker 911 or looking through google for the zoo's number.

I imagine the action plan was-

1. Check if gorilla looks likely to harm child
2. If possible, try to entice gorilla away for a very short period.(dont think they did that)
3. If consider child in immediate harm -shoot gorilla dead.

There's the couple of minutes needed to run to the gun cupboard and get the rifle. Possibly also to get the marksman who can guarantee hitting the gorilla with a kill shot rather than merely injuring it and thereby causing an enraged and hurt silverback gorilla to be one foot away from the child.

It's not the bloody movies. Ten minutes was a perfectly appropriate timescale in which to get it right.

And if they were trying to lure him away. They very sensibly didn't try it indefinitely.