Days after a young boy fell into the gorilla exhibit at the Cincinnati zoo — prompting the zoo’s decision to shoot and kill Harambe, a 17-year-old Gorilla — an archived video emerged showing a similar incident 20 years earlier, with a very different outcome.
In summer 1996, a 3-year-old boy slipped away from his mother and squeezed through a barrier at Brookfield Zoo in Illinois, plummeting more than 15 feet into the enclosure holding seven Gorillas. Gorillas are known to be fiercely territorial animals. They will fight to the death to defend their families.
However, one of the Gorillas, a rare Western Lowland Gorilla called Binti Jua, meaning “daughter of sunshine” went over to the boy and cradled him in her arms, all while her own young child Koola was on her back. She then went over to the edge of the enclosure and waited for the zookeepers to come and collect the child. Binti handed the child over peacefully before returning to the rest of the Gorillas.
Binti received worldwide praise. The boy and the mother have never been identified, but the boy did stay in a hospital for 4 days. Animal behavioral experts claim Binti used her maternal instincts to look after the child. This may have been influenced by the fact that she had her own baby Gorilla with her at the time.
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