{"id":655,"date":"2007-05-23T10:44:52","date_gmt":"2007-05-23T08:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/archives\/655"},"modified":"2007-05-23T10:46:42","modified_gmt":"2007-05-23T08:46:42","slug":"the-lawsuits-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/archives\/655","title":{"rendered":"The Lawsuits Begin"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the afternoon of May 18th, one of the gorillas at the zoo I went to last month<\/a> here in Rotterdam escaped from his enclosure and went on a bit of a rampage.   He somehow managed to scale the wall of his enclosure, climb out, leap across a 4 meter moat and get out into the public.<\/p>\n

The gorilla, Bokito, had also escaped from the zoo he was in previously to this one… so people are up in arms that there weren’t more precautions made to stop him from escaping again.<\/p>\n

A few people were injured, one woman especially who was bitten more than 100 times and dragged for several meters.   She’s still in hospital with serious wounds and her husband is already talking about lawsuits.   Another couple is suing the zoo as well, claiming that their children have been traumatized, aren’t able to sleep and are having panic attacks.<\/p>\n

I wonder what I would do if I was in that situation.  I think if I went to the zoo and was mauled by an escaped gorilla my instinct would be to sue.  I mean that’s not exactly what I’d have in mind when going there and it’s up to the zoo to make sure that the people who visit are kept safe.<\/p>\n

I have to wonder what people expect when visiting the zoo and what they expect from the animals.  If you look at this photo of Bokito in his enclosure, does anyone really think he has a happy life behind that glass watching people stare, make faces, take pics and sometimes even taunt him? <\/p>\n

I mean… seriously!<\/p>\n

It said on the news that the woman who was attacked was a regular at the zoo.   She’d been told repeatedly by workers to not make eye contact with the gorilla because it’s seen as a sign of aggression.  Yet she repeatedly stared and tried to make a connection with Bokito through the glass.  This was even caught on their security video.<\/p>\n

Is it a coincidence that Bokito attacked her in particular?   It wouldn’t seem so.  The woman habitually disregarded the warnings of the zoo staff and in a sense put herself in the dangerous situation.<\/p>\n

Ok sure, he shouldn’t have escaped in the first place… but there has to be a certain level of respect for these animals as well because they are wild animals by nature and they shouldn’t be taunted or challenged simply because they are behind glass.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong, I love the zoo.  It’s the only place I can go to see all these animals I’d never get a chance to see otherwise… but I feel sorry for the animals at the same time. <\/p>\n

I can’t help but feel like this woman had it coming to her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the afternoon of May 18th, one of the gorillas at the zoo I went to last month here in Rotterdam escaped from his enclosure and went on a bit of a rampage.   He somehow managed to scale the wall of his enclosure, climb out, leap across a 4 meter moat and get out into the public. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-life-in-nl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}