I’m working on a long-form project which involves gorillas (I’m not really able to say more at this point), and during my research I was reminded of this.
Gorillas are gentle, shy creatures who would almost always rather run than fight, and they’re some of our closest relatives in the world; we know they’re intelligent, on the very borderline of human intelligence. There is no reason to kill them; mountain gorillas aren’t even good bushmeat. This is the work of some asshole or assholes with guns who couldn’t think of anything better to do with their time than slaughter some gorillas.
This makes me so angry I have trouble expressing it.
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Agreed. Completely.
Ever read Douglas Adams’ “Last Chance to See?” I recommend it to anyone with an interest in endangered species. There’s a great chapter about silverback gorillas.
Although, as you can probably tell from my screenname, I am somewhat biased towards Adams.
It’s a really brilliant book. It makes all the more impression since the Yangtze River Dolphin, which has its own chapter, has gone extinct between when it was written and today.
URL not found. Anyone else?
Strange. I’m getting an URL not found thing too, but when I looked earlier it worked and showed an article about a family of gorillas being killed and carried to be buried somewhere.
We don’t have a problem killing each other, so why should it represent a moral dilemma to kill our species’ relatives?
Yeah Cookie, we don’t have a problem killing or tormenting anything, but we should. I hate the fact that the human race is capable of this sort of thing.
Nothing else has a problem killing or tormenting us. Ants were taking slaves and wasps were killing by the thousands way before we figured out we could tie a stick to a rock and bash someone pretty darned good.