In Other Primate News
On a tragic note, chimp breakout ends badly.
Lest you think the British zoo officials over-reacted, consider the tale of Boston’s own Little Joe:
By LAUREL J. SWEET
19 September 2007
Boston Herald
Children’s horrified screams of “Joe is coming! Joe is coming!” were the first indication babysitter Courtney Roberson had of the nightmare unfolding at the Franklin Park Zoo’s Tropical Rainforest exhibit the day the gorilla known as Little Joe escaped in 2003.
Little Joe isn’t on trial in Suffolk Superior Court. Zoo New England is, in the civil suit over young Nia Scott’s injuries, fear and suffering.
Roberson, 22, kept a hushed courtroom riveted yesterday as she recounted the horror of the ape’s escape. The young woman told a jury how she tried to rush Nia and her three other young charges to safety, pulling doors shut behind her.
“Nia was lagging behind. She could not run as fast as the other girls,” Roberson testified. “I grabbed her and picked her up.”
Then, Roberson said, though she tried to hold a door with all her strength, she was overwhelmed by the powerful ape and could only watch in horror as he won the struggle and his hairy arm reached around the door. Tossed aside like a rag doll by the 300-pound gorilla, Roberson said, Little Joe pounced on her and bit her back.
On the ground, Roberson recalled, she was frozen in “hysterical shock” as she watched Little Joe loom over Nia, then just a 2-year- old toddler.
Roberson testified that she heard the little girl’s screams of terror and saw Little Joe “standing over her on all fours. His face was within inches of her face.”
Though she did not see Little Joe actually strike Nia, Roberson, then a zoo employee who was treating four little girls to a tour of her workplace, saw the rogue ape swing his paws at the tot “five to eight times.”
Jurors hearing the Scott family’s negligence case against Zoo New England and president John Linehan learned yesterday that Little Joe, who was born in captivity, was introduced to the Boston zoo’s gorilla family in 1997 to learn how to be an ape after being roughed up by older male primates at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.
But even as Little Joe grew and demonstrated superior climbing skills never before seen at Franklin Park, zoo attorney Kevin Kenneally insisted the Tropical Rainforest’s design met zoo industry safety standards. He said Little Joe was cared for by people who “dedicated their lives” to getting creatures out of cages and into open-air exhibits “where they can thrive.”
But Scott’s attorney, Donald Gibson, argued the wonder of nature has been lost on Scott, who after her attack regressed in her potty training and was too traumatized even for therapy.
Zoo New England was found liable, to the tune of $175,000, but not negligent.
Topics: apes
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:52 am on Saturday, October 6, 2007
6 Responses to “In Other Primate News”
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October 6th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Sympathetic concern for chimpanzees and objective to deadly force on one that is uncontrolled tends to result from igorance about chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are famous for “ape rages” and, since they are vastly stronger than humans, they can easily kill and tear apart a grown man while under the influence of such rage. They do not sedate easily and the sedation dose is close to the lethal one.
October 6th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Apologies for editing error. First sentence should read
Sympathetic concern for chimpanzees and objections to the use of deadly force on one…
October 6th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Every cloud has a silver lining. Did you know that chimpanzees taste like chicken?
October 6th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
AHippler, got what you were saying. I have a deep-seated bias for primates, but I recognize that they are not humans, and that they are unbelievably strong, and have a prediliction for violence when it suits their natural urges. Like all higher animals, just FYI, anybody.
October 7th, 2007 at 3:29 am
October 7th, 2007 at 3:43 am
WOW! a negigence case where the verdict matched the facts! I’m amazed!
I’ve been on tours of these enclosures here at the Dallas Zoo. The precautions taken to prevent escape are amazing and they certainly try to watch for even the most unlikely scenarios. Animals somehow still escape.
Zoo New England is liable because it was their ape that attacked the kid. They were not negligent because they took all reasonable, and even many unreasonable, precautions to try to keep this type of thing from happening.