We only care about the beautiful animals

Of course you shoot the gorilla!

Who would question the decision to shoot a gorilla – even an endangered lowland gorilla – when the life of a 4-year-old child was threatened?

Well, tens of thousands of people from around the world, that’s who.

A Facebook page called “Justice for Harambe,” the name given to the 17-year-old gorilla, received more than 100,000 “likes” soon after it was created. The page was described as a way to speak out about the “murder” of Harambe.

Thousands of other critics, including members of animal rights groups such as PETA, have called for a criminal investigation of the boy’s parents. Others have taken officials at the Cincinnati Zoo to task for their decision to kill the gorilla, which was to have been used in an effort to breed the rare species in captivity.

As the story has been pieced together, a 4-year-old boy visiting the zoo over the Memorial Day weekend was pestering his mother to let him jump into the gorilla enclosure. She took her eyes off of him for an instant, and he managed to flop over the railing, crawl through some bushes and plunge 15 feet into a shallow moat in the yard where the gorillas were kept.

As onlookers screamed, Harambe, a huge male gorilla, grabbed the child by the leg and roughly dragged him several feet as the boy’s head banged on the concrete. Zoo officials rushed to the scene, where they reviewed their options. A dart gun would not act quickly enough to knock out Harambe before he might harm the child. Trying to coax him to surrender the boy also was judged to be too risky.

Zoo Director Thayne Maynard made the call. Noting that the gorilla was capable of crushing a coconut with its hand, he said the noise of the crowd had disoriented Harambe and made him nervous, and the only reasonable choice was to shoot the gorilla.

“We are heartbroken about losing Harambe, but a child’s life was in danger and a quick decision had to be made by our Dangerous Animal Response Team,” Maynard said in a statement posted by the zoo on Facebook.

In all, the child was in the enclosure for about 10 minutes.

The death of the gorilla was unfortunate but necessary under the circumstances. The important result is that the boy was saved, relatively unscathed.

Any parents in that situation would have wanted zoo officials to do whatever necessary to save their child. Those who posted hateful messages on social media, such as “that animal is more important than your (expletive) kid” and “u should’ve been shot,” need professional help.

It also is doubtful that many of those who have been so highly critical of the boy’s mother have ever had to deal with a rambunctious 4-year-old boy.

Putting aside the heated argument for a moment, this incident needs to be viewed in a larger perspective. As so often happens, this is an example where the outpouring of grief is greatest for a “noble” animal, a beautiful beast, one to which we can ascribe human feelings. Many of the critics claimed Harambe was trying to “protect” the child, ignoring the possibility he might unintentionally have crushed the boy’s head like a coconut.

We love the cuddly giant pandas, the sleek and beautiful big cats, the elephants and rhinos whose numbers are dwindling. They’re all so majestic and photogenic.

But we don’t often pay as much attention to the fact that thousands of humbler species of plants and animals are on the brink of extinction around the world. Amphibians – the environmental canaries in the coal mine – are disappearing with alarming regularity, due in large part to climate change and destruction of habitat – things we humans should be working to control.

Bats, necessary for insect control and plant pollination, are dying by the millions, with five species now endangered in the United States. Few of us have ever heard of the Gunnison sage grouse, but it is the most endangered bird in North America, soon likely to go the way of the carrier pigeon.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump was berating California wildlife officials last week for diverting water to protect the endangered delta smelt, a 3-inch fish that resembles a bait minnow. Trump implied that giving that water to farmers instead would solve the state’s drought problems.

That’s the kind of thinking that has led to habitat destruction worldwide. The notion that we can accommodate any and all of the needs of humans at the expense of wildlife is a big part of the reason that lowland gorillas are facing extinction.

It’s why those desperately trying to save the gorillas have resorted to efforts to breed them in zoos. It’s a sad commentary about how little we regard and how much we still have to learn about the intertwined relationship of all living things.

Harambe should have been living and procreating in a lowland forest in central Africa. Instead, he was a captive in the Cincinnati Zoo, a last-ditch candidate to save his species.

Ultimately, we’re all complicit in his death.

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 4:26 PM with the headline "We only care about the beautiful animals."