What's common between Prakash Rai and Suresh Tiwari of Kolkata, Lucas Tomas of Buenos Aires, David Villalobos of New York City, Jaiprakash Bezbaruah of Guwahati, and Tracy Weiler of Manitowoc, Wisconsin? Each of them makes the cut for Ranker's "17 Idiots Who Climbed the Fence at the Zoo", resulting in tangling with an assortment of tigers, lions, and bears.
Some came out battered and bruised and others were not so lucky, but public fury is mounting against human stupidity amid continuing uproar over the "murder" of a rare gorilla that had to be put down by authorities at the
Cincinnati Zoo after a toddler who slipped into the primate's enclosure was assessed to be in a life-threatening situation.
Such is the public fury that parents of the toddler have had to hire a public relations firm to express contrition after they were trolled online and berated outside for causing the death of an endangered species.
The fact that they turned out to be an African-American family and the father of the boy is reported to have a criminal record appears to have made critics more unsparing, even as the mother has pleaded that she is usually careful about minding her children and it was an "accident" that the boy slipped into the moat around the gorilla enclosure. Witnesses to the incident are saying that the boy, who is only four, had told his mother before the incident that he wanted to jump the fence and get into the enclosure.
Meanwhile, debate rages about whether the boy was really in danger; whether the gorilla was protecting the boy or was poised to attack him. Videos posted online show the gorilla initially handle the boy tenderly as it hovers over him. It then begins to drag the boy rather forcefully through the moat as he begins screaming.
While some critics of the decision to shoot the gorilla say are they are obviously not aware of their strength — they are regarded as the largest living primates — others say in this case
Harambe the gorilla should have been tranquilized. It simply does not appear threatening.
But zoo authorities say the idea of shooting it with a hypodermic was too risky. "That would have definitely created alarm in the male gorilla. When you dart an animal, anesthetic doesn't work in one second, it works over a period of a few minutes to 10 minutes. The risk was due to the power of that animal," zoo director Thane Maynard said at a news conference on Monday.
"The gorilla was clearly agitated. The gorilla was clearly disoriented," he added.
But animal protection activists have launched an online petition pressing the zoo to take legal action against the boy's parents, attracting more than 200,000 signatures within two days of the incident. "This beautiful gorilla lost his life because the boy's parents did not keep a closer watch on the child," the petition states.
Local police has said they have are not considering any charges against the parents.
There is now growing sense that the world's wildlife needs to be protected against enclosed spectatorship, carelessness, and most of all, human idiocy.
