Donald Clarke: So many gorilla experts. So little insight

Each week some story emerges that invites us to pretend we are the greatest living authority on stuff about which we know next to nothing. This week the sad tale of Harambe the gorilla acted as our baloney catalyst.

It’s extraordinary how many people seem to be the greatest living authority – let’s just say GLA – on the anthropology of the great apes. It was equally astonishing how many civilians were GLAs on the efficacy of tranquillising darts. Most depressing of all was the urge – backed up by no great evidence to speak of – to condemn a mother as “worthless” and have her home life investigated.

No surprises there. There is nothing the human animal enjoys more than criticising other humans’ treatment of their children. If they’re not being neglected they’re being abused. How better can one make oneself feel militantly virtuous? I don’t just behave myself; I make sure to gossip about people who fail to live up to my standards.

Some things are clear about the case. Much is still murky. While visiting Cincinnati Zoo on Saturday Michelle Gregg, a mother of four, lost sight of her four-year-old son.

It transpired that he had made his way into the enclosure occupied by the 17-year-old gorilla. Harambe dragged him through his moat and then held the boy by his wrists.

Almost immediately a GLA consensus – derived, perhaps, from viewings of Magilla Gorilla and that David Attenborough clip – emerged arguing that the animal was seeking to protect the child. “He almost was guarding the boy, was protecting him,” an eyewitness said. The authorities were not convinced and shot the unfortunate gorilla dead.

The most lucid debunking of the happy assumption that Harambe posed no danger came from a zookeeper, Amanda O'Donoughue. Long experienced in dealing with gorillas, which she called her favourite animals, O'Donoughue argued that the behaviour was the "stuff of any keeper's nightmares".

“I keep hearing that the gorilla was trying to protect the boy,” she continued. “I do not find this to be true. Harambe reaches for the boy’s hands and arms, but only to position the child better for his own displaying purposes.”

She further explained that tranquillisers would not act quickly enough and might initially disturb the gorilla. Her very reluctant conclusion was that the zoo took the right decision in killing Harambe.

The Australian philosopher Peter Singer has argued that the moral boundary between human and animal is arbitrary. He points out that the definition of "animal" takes in everything from oysters to great apes. The work of researchers like Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas and Frans de Waal "amply demonstrates that the great apes are intelligent beings with strong emotions that in many ways resemble our own", he wrote.

An argument can thus be constructed that the certain death of one large ape is morally preferable to the likely death of a smaller one. We don’t know whether the zoo authorities pondered this moral dilemma, but one wouldn’t envy any spokesman having to justify placing the gorilla’s life above that of the child’s.

It might play to a nation of vegans, but everyday life choices in the US confirm that most people accept a queasy domination over the animal kingdom. I am no GLA, but the decision seems to have been unavoidable (which is different from “right”).

We are rarely comfortable with situations in which everyday errors have catastrophic results. Few parents have not lost control of a child at some point. I imagine this happens dozens of times a day at every zoo.

Very, very rarely does such a child end up in the pen with a potentially dangerous animal. When the child is quietly recovered, few maniacs huddle around the mom and yell abuse about her supposedly unsatisfactory parenting skills.

In this instance an unwritten law of GLA logic argues that somebody must be guilty of an offence comparable in enormity to its ultimate result. Also, as we’ve mentioned, people just love being self-righteous about other people’s children.

Events played out as they do these days. "RIP #harambe I am sorry that your life was taken because of a worthless mother could not control her child," a suddenly ubiquitous Instagram post argued. A petition has urged child services to look into the child's home life. There is worse if you are prepared to look.

Here is my advice. Every person who favoured the “worthless” post should, when they see a mother losing control of a child in a supermarket, bellow that word straight into the parent’s face. The result may be different. The offence is the same.

What an awful mess. Poor old Harambe.