Rohan Roberts | 31 May 2016
Yesterday, Harambe (a critically endangered lowland gorilla) was shot dead by zoo authorities in Cincinnati after a toddler fell into his enclosure.
Based on our current relationship with non-human animals (including the great apes) there was no option left for the zoo authorities. (Currently we value the life of a human more than an ape’s). As the zoo director pointed out: Anyone who disagrees with their action doesn’t understand ape behaviour. Also, a tranquiliser dart would take too long to be effective and it would take less than a second for an agitated silverback to destroy the toddler. We should be lucky we didn’t have to make the difficult choice they had to under difficult circumstances. Animal expert Jack Hanna agrees.
I’m not going to pretend I know more than the experts. At any rate, if it were our child or the child of someone we knew, we wouldn’t for a second hesitate to choose the child over the gorilla.
Ok, that’s out of the way. But there are broader issues to consider:
- Zoos
- Animal Rights
- Personhood
Zoos
I love wildlife and hate zoos. Zoos are an abomination. I refuse to visit them. If I want to see wildlife I will see them in the wild; which is why I’ve been to Borneo to see orangutans; to Indonesia to see gibbons; to Madagascar to see the lemurs; to Tanzania to see chimps; and just a couple of months ago to Uganda to see Mountain Gorillas. All in the wild. Never in zoos.
Harambe should never have been in a zoo in the first place. Want to be angry at someone for what happened? Be angry at all those people who visit zoos instead of boycotting them.
Animal Rights
I don’t believe in Animal Rights. There can be no rights without responsibilities. However, what I do believe in is that there are certain rights humans don’t have:
- We don’t have the right to imprison animals in cages.
- We don’t have the right to torture or torment animals in any way.
- We don’t have the right to hunt animals for sport or exploit them for entertainment.
- We don’t have the right to treat the great apes and other mammals as anything but persons.
Admittedly, eating animals for food and using animals in experiments are two difficult areas – but our views on that are evolving all the time. I believe future generations will look back on us with horror at the thought that we kill entire animals for food and experimentation; – the same kind horror with which we currently look back on slave owners in the past.
So, my point is, we had no right to imprison Harambe, in the first place.
Personhood
Humans are persons. But we have to ask ourselves if merely possessing 23 pairs of chromosomes is the only criterion for personhood. Courts around the world are considering cases where chimps and orangutans are being asked to be granted personhood status.
A person is sentient. A person is conscious. A person has emotions. A person has memory. A person has a sense of self.
By these criteria, 17 year old Harambe the silverback gorilla was more of a person than a human infant. (To say this, is not the same as saying that we should have sacrificed the boy. I believe the boy should have been saved at any cost).
Anyone who is against granting gorillas and the other great apes personhood status, is guilty of “Speciesism,” i.e. discriminating based solely on which species one belongs to. The term was first coined by the moral philosopher Peter Singer. He compared it to racism (discrimination based solely on skin colour or ethnic origin). For a detailed, lucid, and thoroughly rational exposition on his position, read his book, Practical Ethics – banned in many European countries in the 1970s because it was too controversial. I read it. There’s nothing controversial. Everything he says makes complete sense if we have intellectual integrity, are not moral cowards, and are not internally hypocritical and inconsistent in our thinking.
We need to approach the subject of human-animal relationship with logic, reason, and compassion. Ill-conceived ideas, half-baked notions, and sentimental fuzzy responses are what we don’t need.
In conclusion, Harambe was a person. He should never have been in a zoo in the first place. If you are fascinated by animals go see them in the wild.
Link to the video of Harambe and the boy
Link to an article in TIME magazine
