Nothing could be more simple.
Which is exactly why it’s so complicated.
After all, what could be more simple than the decision to save a little boy’s life? Especially when the little boy’s mother is standing by crying, helpless to save her toddler without your help?
That’s why the decision to shoot and kill a 400-pound gorilla was so simple when it dragged the little boy through the water of the zoo enclosure for ten minutes and had the power at any instant to snap the child’s spine, or worse. It was a heartbreaking decision, and ultimately hard to live with, but simple nonetheless.
After all, if it had been a 400-pound truck driver, teacher, or disgruntled postal worker dragging a child around like that, what cop wouldn’t have squeezed off a kill shot? And what police force wouldn’t honor the cop by giving him a medal? And what community’s citizens wouldn’t praise the cop for his coolness under stress?
And when interviewed later, what cop wouldn’t explain that the decision was heartbreaking and hard to live with — although in the end it was a simple choice because no other option would do under the circumstances?
Simple.
And yet, because it was a zoo gorilla and not a truck driver, teacher, or postal worker manhandling the child, that simple decision is all the more complicated.
Because our relationships with animals are — to put it simply — complicated.
Some animals we slaughter on sight with traps and poisons sold for the sole purpose of eradicating them from our homes.
Other animals we shackle as beasts of burden to pull plows and break the earth so we can plant crops we like to eat.
Some animals we bring into our homes as beloved family members, giving them names and protecting their welfare with laws that mandate our humane treatment of them.
Other animals we bring into our homes only as burgers, chops, and roasts. We love them most when they are slathered with ketchup or bourguignon sauce.
And who decides which type of animal is which?
Well, it’s complicated — even for carnivores.
In China, dogs are considered delicious — but don’t try bringing that Shanghai recipe to Chicago. T-bone steak? Succulent in New York, but sacrilege in New Delhi. And you don’t have to leave your own country to know that your Thanksgiving plans for the turkey on the table that are nothing like your plans for the parrot in the cage, or the pigeon on the window ledge.
And yet, although it sounds complicated when stated that way, nothing could be simpler than your personal relationship with animals, right? Mention any animal, and you know in a flash how you feel about it.
Cat? Rat? Chicken? Horse?
Loved pet. Loathed vermin. Tasty meal. Transportation.
It’s all so clear-eyed and simple.
But only if you squint past the complexity of it all.
And our relationship with animals doesn’t get any more simple — or complex — than at a zoo, where we express our love for animals by imprisoning them against their will for our entertainment.
Once imprisoned, we treat them as humanely as we know how to do. Under our care, they usually live longer than others of their kind would have lived if we had left them alone in the wild. A great deal of animal research is funded from the admission fees we pay—money that wouldn’t exist without open-to-the-public zoos because as much as we claim to love animals, we don’t unlock our wallets to save them unless we’re also allowed to see them up close in captivity.
We bring our children to see the animals, in hopes that they too will learn to love the beasts and to care for them and want to protect them from extinction. Because zoo lovers are humane.
But they are also human.
So when a human child falls into the clutches of a massively powerful zoo beast, our common humanity makes the decision simple.
Which is why it’s so complicated.
Today, a magnificent endangered lowland gorilla is dead, made all the more tragic because we will never know for sure what was going through its head in the moments before it was shot and killed. For as much as we may learn about how an animal acts by watching it, we will never really know exactly how it thinks.
We define our own species as homo sapiens because of our ability to think, which is why we find it so heartbreaking to take the life of that gorilla without knowing what thoughts motivated its actions.
Still, the highest thought of our thinking species (and of most other species) is to preserve the life of our babies. No other thought comes close in importance, or is as simple to make when faced with the choice.
We feel horrible about the gorilla’s death, and just as it’s in our nature to take action to save a child at all costs, it is also in our nature to feel someone must be held to blame: The parents? The zoo architects? The animal handlers? The guy with the gun? Some would even blame the gorilla for the same reason that others would excuse it from blame — for acting like a gorilla.
All we know for sure is that zoo patrons will miss the enjoyment of gazing at that magnificent animal — a creature that was put into that enclosure (and also put into that encounter with the child) through no choice or fault of its own.
So who is to blame for it all?
The answer — to put it simply — is complicated.
