As the Internet continues to debate all the things that went wrong at the Cincinnati Zoo last Saturday, we have an update on Harambe.
The 17-year old was shot and killed by a zoo employee a few days ago after a four-year old boy tumbled into his enclosure.
Following 10 minutes of the 450-pound animal thrashing all around with the boy in his clutches, officials saw no alternative but to take Harambe down with a fatal shot.
They said afterward that the use of a tranquilizer would have made the gorilla angry and the amount of time it would have taken for the tranquilizer to go into effect could have cost the boy his life.
Once again, we present the disturbing surveillance footage from the incident:
In the days since the unfortunate situation took place, the mother of the child has defended herself and thanked God her son is safe.
The Cincinnati Police Department, meanwhile, has started an investigation into both the mother and the boy’s father (who was not present at the time) to determine whether or not charges of criminal negligence ought to be filed.
This is the latest, however:
According to Cincinnati.com, reproductive biologists from the Cincinnati Zoo’s Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife extracted viable sperm from Harambe after he died.
The center plans to use this sperm in its reproductive programs, which includes artificial insemination and genetics research.
In other words: the beloved gorilla may actually live on.
He’ll have the opportunity to father future generations of his endangered species.
“There’s a future,” zoo director Thane Maynard said during a press conference Monday. “It’s not the end of his gene pool.”
There are only 175,000 western lowland gorillas remaining in the wild. The Cincinnati Zoo has actually seen the birth of 50 gorillas overall, with the most recent being Elle. She was born in August 2015.
In somewhat related news, the world’s most foremost expert on chimpanzees has spoken out on this tragedy.
“I tried to see exactly what was happening – it looked as though the gorilla was putting an arm around the child – like the female who rescued and returned the child from the Chicago exhibit,” Jane Goodall wrote in an email to Maynard, referring to a 1996 incident in which a female gorilla picked up and handed an unconscious eight-year-old to her keepers.
She also expressed sympathy to Maynard for having to defend an action he very much did not wish to take.
“Anyway, whatever, it is a devastating loss to the zoo, and to the gorillas,” Goodall added. “How did the others react? Are they allowed to see, and express grief, which seems to be so important.”