The Emotional Fallout After The Shooting Of Harambe

Nobody is applauding the death of the gorilla Harambe, who was shot dead at the Cincinnati Zoo on Saturday, after a four year old fell into Harambe’s enclosure. It’s sad, however a tranquilizer does not have the immediate immobilization effect that a firearm does, and could result in the animal becoming aggressive.

But, the knee-jerk reaction of blaming the parents and creating a petition to have them investigated by CPS (with 75,000 signatures as of this post)? Ridiculous.

Also, we’ll save the futility of most online petitions for another post.

Kids must have some sort of special class in preschool where they learn the art of sneaking away from parents. In can happen in a moment when a parent has their attention drawn to something else (there are reports that the parent in question here was tending to other children).

I get the fact that people are angry, but making decisions while angry is often not the best idea. It’s pretty easy to overreact when you’re pissed off and ignore rationality.

People are angry at the situation and don’t know who to blame. I get it. Harambe was a Silverback Gorilla, which is an endangered species. But it’s not black and white; it’s shared blame. Sure, the parent could have prevented the incident by being #supermom, but every parent has had a moment where they didn’t have 100% focus on their child 100% of the time. Anyone that tells you otherwise is a lying liar.

Incidents like Harambe being shot spark faux outrage from people who are seeking to feel better about themselves by putting others down.

The zoo also could have prevented it by having a secured enclosure for Harambe. It’s a really shitty situation, with no one person to blame.

This was not a situation where there was one catastrophic breakdown: multiple failures occurred.

This could have happened to just about any parent. So instead of immediately reacting with some sort of online petition (which is pretty meaningless, particularly since it’s being sent to the zoo itself rather than Ohio CPS [further illustrating the lack of rational thought involved]), take a moment to look at the information we have and don’t draw conclusions about the quality of parenting.