That was not Harambe.
You are thinking about Jambo the male Silverback who actively protected a child who fell into the gorilla enclosure in 1986 on Jersey Zoo.
There's actually multiple instances of gorillas helping kids that get in the enclosure, which is why Harambe is so tragic.
He could've been just another gorilla trying to do exactly that, but we gauged his body language, the (unintended) violence the kid was facing from being dragged around, and also male gorillas are more dangerous, so for all we know, we shot an innocent gorilla that was just waiting for the zookeeper to show up.
This is a false retelling of history. Harambe dragged the kid at high speed through a water filled concrete pool causing several abrasive burns across the kid's body. He definitely harmed the kid.
Harambe probably didn't intend to hurt the child, he was just confused, but humans are much more fragile than gorillas.
Ultimately though I'd rather be upset a gorilla was killed than deal with the fallout of the child being killed. Who knows how much gorilla hate there would be. How much potentially less gorilla conservation. It's an unfortunate thing to have to admit that outside the memes this was the better outcome.
Yeah, this narrative that Harambe wasn't doing anything is straight up wrong. There were multiple witness statements where they all corroborated that Harambe was violently throwing the child around, shoving him to the ground and holding him under water.
There's even a video where you can hear people screaming in fear.
I was about to say, you don't need to believe the statements, there's videos. Harambe was for sure yoinking the kid around and not protecting him at all.
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u/citizensyn 4h ago
Also harambee not only didn't harm the child but very clearly made every effort to protect it from the other gorillas and the crowd