4 year old boy falls into gorilla enclosure at US zoo

[littleducks]

The gorilla was then shot. Really shocked at this (daily mail suggests a similar incident occurred 30 years ago in Jersey).

m.wlwt.com/news/video-gorilla-grabs-child-whos-fallen-into-habitat/39774904

I think this is what people are referring to.

Parents are hugely at fault here. Who loses sight of a 4 year old for long enough for them to get into the enclosure.
Zoo at fault. It shouldn't be possible for a child to climb in.
And the poor gorilla pays with its life.
So wrong.

jsut watched the video and it doesn't look like the childs being hurt

You can't possibly say that. It's a wild animal and therefore unpredictable. One swipe and that boy could have been dead. At one point he was almost sitting on the child in a water filled moat. It wouldn't even need aggression to cause his death.

Also how were they to get the child out?

Oh I've just googled it and apparently the gorilla was dragging the boy around for 10 minutes
10 minutes?!

I spend a lot of time in zoo's and have seen some horrendous behaviour from visitors. Throwing sandwiches to chimps, poking eels with a stick, putting hands in the eel tank, leaning over and stroking animals. I regularly see kids climb on barriers, even across 'do not climb' signs. Can you tell this makes me very cross?

I feel very sorry for this gorilla. He really was magnificent and didn't seem at all aggressive from the video. If the parents were at fault I hope the zoo prosecute.

In Jersey, it was rather different, Jambo was not shot.

He guarded the other gorillas from this small creature that had fallen into their home (dry moat) which had the same effect as guarding the boy from the gorillas. Until trusted keepers could work out how to get the boy out, which they did. He survived, despite many injuries from the fall.

The jersey zoo incident was incredible.

metro.co.uk/2016/01/21/boy-saved-by-huge-gorilla-30-years-ago-reveals-how-incident-shaped-his-life-5635889/

firesidechat true....i was saying what I saw. maybe you saw a different video.

I think they cut part of the video. Seems surreal watching the video

It was a beautiful gorilla, I'm not sure who is to blame but it does seem the gorilla was let down.

Apparently the video that has been released has been edited at the point where the gorilla starts dragging the child.

You can hear the poor mother shouting to her son to stay calm.

It's easy to say the mother/parents were negligent, but I have taken my children to the zoo and may not have had eyes on my 4 year old 100% of the time if I was wrangling my 2 year old. I would not think that a child would be able to climb into an enclosure.

The family apparently had younger children. Who of us can honestly say we have never been distracted by one child and taken our eyes off another?

The videos you see in the news has had a bit cut out apparently. Where the gorilla was dragging him round for 10 mins.

Unfortunatly a gorilla is a strong animal. One wrong move and it could have killed that boy.

I don't know why Jambo 30 years ago was a different case. Possibly because apart from carrying him around he was incredibly gentle.

The zoo is at fault as no child should be able to acces an animal enclosure.

thats why reins or the wrist things were invented (yep I used them)

On a four year old?

I have also done Reception Class trips to the zoo and can promise you that with one adult to every five 4-5 year olds, it's not possible to watch every one all the time. If an enclosure is accessible and a child is determined...

Unfortunatly as an animal lover, I have to agree that the zoo are at fault.

A child should not be able to gain access into an animals enclosure. Especially one as potentially dangerous as a gorilla

Really sad because he was a breeding male.

They had to, he dragged that child through the water, hearing the mother scream "Mummy's right here baby" just gave me the horrors. It would have taken a second to be crushed/drowned, the gorilla wasn't protecting him like in Jersey he was playing with the boy.

It's a terrible thing for the gorilla to be killed, it did nothing wrong, I can't believe a child could fall into the enclosure but I won't blame the parents.

I've been out to places with 3 DC under 6 and it is totally impossible to watch the older ones every second, if you are toddler wrangling you have an "awareness" of the older ones, have generally assessed the safety of your surroundings for how far they can roam. In the same circumstances I wouldn't have thought for a second they would be able to go from looking at the enclosure to falling in! Why would you??

I tell you what though I think ten minutes is an awfully long time and as a parent someone else would have been handed the others and I'd have been in that enclosure with the little one, assuming an adult could fit where the child fell.

I think the boy has been hurt, they knew he was hurt and was indeed in serious danger of death. No alternative but to destroy the gorilla. It's a lose / lose situation. The report I read said the child had crawled into the enclosure, not climbed, so I wonder if he went under a fence? Either way, that shouldn't have been possible.

apparently the little boy was able to 'squeeze' through some railings and then fell.

It is just so sad as the gorilla was such a beautiful animal, and was only doing what was natural ..investigating this strange small mammal that had appeared in his territory.

its very easy to say they should have sedated him, he was not harming the little boy, etc but if it was my child i think i would have wanted something done immediately to get my child out of harms way.

absolutely tragic for all involved, and the only fault really lies with enclosure designers who have railings some one can squeeze through.

The second best thing about the jersey incident is that it was filmed by a man called Brian Le Lion

oh and another reason we should not have zoos

Poor gorilla, but they had no choice. Child was at huge risk.

It is not possible for children to be supervised every second of every day, you only have to bend over to tie the shoelaces of one of them for the other to do something terrible like this. One of my children once made a run for it in the airport under a 'no entry' barrier and got quite a few yards into a restricted area til the men with guns appeared:( We were chasing after her, but you only need a few seconds for a child to become inaccessible to you, or to escape out of a door, or slip under a cordon.

I think it's awful that the gorilla was shot but saying the parents were neglectful is also wrong IMO. If a poster had said my child escaped out of the garden today, it would have been full of sympathetic posts about how these things happen at least once in every childhood/lost children/back turned for a second. These things happened, this time was a tragedy for the gorilla (and the child may yet be hurt quite badly, I don't know).

This is terrible but I recall a happier story from years back. A young lad fell into an animal enclosure somehow (landed badly and may have hurt himself) and the zoo-keepers watched and waited. Big daddy ape went up to the boy, gently prodded and sniffed him, then covered him up with leaves as though he was a poorly baby ape, watched over him for a while - then a keeper distracted the ape while another chap went into the enclosure to get the lad out. All unharmed. What a shame this wasn't the case here.

I'd like to think the decision to end the gorillas life wasn't taken lightly. The people at fault here are the zoo for poor safety with regards the enclosures that they build and maintain and the parents for inadequate supervision. As a parent of a 18mo and a 4 1/2 though I would never think for one second that an enclosure in a zoo would be a danger to us - I would assume that they were extra safe as matters like this are dangerous to all and for insurance purposes etc.

On a day out to zoos I, before now, would have thought my kids were most at risk from other humans. Not any more!