Primates are and always have been my favorite animals, as a young girl I often dreamed of one day visiting the Congo to work towards learning about and preserving such amazing creatures. It seriously saddens me that we lost one in such an unfortunate event. However I do believe that the keepers made the only choice they could to save a tiny human beings life. Unlike what we see in the movies tranquilizers aren’t immediate and the bigger the animal the more likely you are for that animal to freak out for a while before actually be garnered unconscious. If they had chosen to go the route of a tranquilizer the little boy would likely have been gravely injured or worse killed. It was a sad choice, but it was the only choice they could have made.

The mother shouldn’t be hung out to dry either, toddler’s can get away very quickly and if they don’t want to be grabbed (and this one didn’t a few people tried to grab him before he fell in) they can be very slippery. The whole incident was a horrible accident and people really shouldn’t be witch hunting.