Photo: Courtesy Gladys Porter Zoo
The Texas zookeeper who raised Harambe, the 17-year-old western lowland gorilla who was shot dead at the Cincinnati Zoo on Saturday is mourning the loss of the animal he remembers as “never aggressive or mean.”
Jerry Stones, the facilities director for theGladys Porter Zooin Brownsville, Texas, raised Harambe from the time he was three weeks old.
From his birth, Stones says Harambe was a “character” and “just a neat little guy to be around.”
“He was very playful and always running around with the others,” he says of Harambe’s time with the other gorillas in his enclosure. When it came to interacting with humans, Stones says “He was never aggressive or mean to people.”
While Harambe didn t appear aggressive, Stones says he stopped venturing into his enclosure when the gorilla was about 7 years old. By the time a gorilla reaches that age, he explains, their size and weight can make them unsafe to engage with.
Stones says he can’t comment on the zoo’s decision to shoot Harambe after he grabbed a 4-year-old boy who had slipped into the gorilla enclosure, but admits that he was “devastated” to learn the news.
Stones believes gorillas to be highly intelligent, but he disagrees with some experts’ suggestions that the gorillas remaining at the Cincinnati Zoocould face depression following their loss.
“They’ll handle it just fine,” he says. “I’ve been around gorillas that have had losses in their troupe and they stay quiet for a few days but they’re okay.”
Stones cautions against ascribing too many human characteristics or feelings to the animals. “They do some things that are human-like but they aren’t human,” he explains. “They’re very intelligent but we need to let them be gorillas.”
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Harambe was sent to the Cincinnati Zoo in September 2014 in the hopes that he would eventually breed with the female gorillas there. Western lowland gorillas arecritically endangered in the wildand there are just 765 gorillas like Harambe living in zoos worldwide.
After Harambe was shot and killed, reproductive biologistsextracted viable spermfrom the mammal for use in programs like artificial insemination and genetic research. “There’s a future,”zoo director Thane Maynardsaid during a press conference Monday. “It’s not the end of his gene pool.”
The staff of the Gladys Porter Zoo is also doing its part to ensure that the beloved gorilla’s legacy carries on. The zoo set up theHarambe Fundto support gorilla research and conservation efforts in Africa.
source: people.com
