A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village | Hacker News Reader

A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village

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184 pointssimonebrunozzi138 comments

Good call sending the Gorilla away (though it didn't end well for the Gorilla), because there is no controlling a 200-pound angry wild animal when its upset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_(chimpanzee)

And Bears, too:

> Even though it may appear that the bear attacked for no reason, there was a reason. "You can train them and use as many safety precautions as you can, but you're still taking a chance. It's still a wild animal"

Indeed. https://archive.is/BsriF

Domesticated dogs attack and maim on a regular basis and kill someone pretty much weekly in North America[1]. It's bizarre that we would expect non-domesticated, larger, more dangerous animals to be not be, well, dangerous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_t...

It's interesting that the vast majority of them are pit bulls. That might suggest that neither domesticated dogs nor wild animals are as likely to attack as are animals specifically bred to attack.

I wince when I read about pit bull owners proclaiming how their dog is harmless and 'one of the family'. They've clearly not watched the videos I have. And I don't accept that when a pit bull it's the 'fault of the owner'. There's something inherent in them that causes their brain to switch into attack mode for any reason. And once they do attack it's very difficult to get them to stop.

So you watched some videos, and now you know much better how the animal behaves than those who have lived with it for its entire life?

I know an unnecessary risk when I see one. Those breeds are banned in some countries for good reason.

Do you though? People with a lot more information than you have disagree strongly with you.

I know I had two rather fearless pug dogs for 15 years, and the only scary incidents we had during their lives were with pits and mixes. There was one dog park in particular where there was a higher than normal concentration of them that I had to stop going to altogether due to the number of scary incidents. One in particular where I had to physically step in and was bit, fortunately the damage was minor.

As a consequence of this, I became accustomed to immediately assessing the aggressiveness of the dogs by eye gazing upon approach, and found the vast majority gentle and sweet. So I get the frustration of their owners, esp ones who take them in as rescues as the local shelters are flooded with them. 9/10 of these animals will probably go through life showing no aggression and live life as wonderful family pets.

But all these excuses about how it’s the owners fault in how they raised them, that there is no official breed, etc, etc... is bs hand waving. These dogs can be dangerous like that pet chimp who ripped that woman’s hands and face off. There is something instinctual in them, and the physical ability, to do real harm.

As to other breeds that can be worrisome, generally bred for protection, such as dobies, rotts, and German Shepard’s, I never sensed the fear that one of those would instantly end the life of my dogs within seconds. Pits and mixes - easily a “holy shit that was close” encounter in the triple digits, probably once a month on average throughout their lifetimes. Far too many situations where an owner had trouble controlling their dog and they got dangerously close.

Nuture over nature in my opinion.

Dogs are like people in that childhood trauma never really goes away. If a dog was mistreated at any point in their life. Even before you owned the dog years ago, it could manifest in aggression.

We had a dog growing up, medium sized poodle mix, that we had adopted at one year and were told had been abused by the husband. Not typically an aggressive dog. However certain unfamiliar men, not all men, but some skinny, white men it seemed were liable to be met with aggression and family guarding behavior.

Every dog I have raised since puppyhood, including a 115 pound mixed breed and a 100 pound husky have had zero aggression issues. That is not to say one can be careless. There is always the chance, and you have to have the space and be able to handle any dog you own.

Another factor is probably the owners themselves, but there are likely more than just these two. We don't have enough info to disentangle possible partial causes and how much each cause contributes.

> Below are lists of fatal dog attacks in the United States reported by the news media, published in scholarly papers, or mentioned through other sources. In the lists below, the breed is assigned by the sources.

It's because you're looking at a biased slice of data. There's no national database of fatal dog attacks and people are scared of pit bulls so the media reports on them more.

> people are scared of pit bulls so the media reports on them more.

How do you know this?

And also because pitbulls were created to fight other dogs, and descend from bulldogs, which were created to fight to the death against bulls.

It is also because Pit Bull is not a breed and so anytime a dog bites and a dog has an unclear breed, but looks vaguely like a terrier it is easier to write down that the attack was by a Pit Bull.

It is also likely that owners who desire a dog that was bred for fighting want their dog to be aggressive and so train them to be.

Some data does exist:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305270428_Character...

> Pit bull bites were implicated in half of all surgeries performed and over 2.5 times as likely to bite in multiple anatomic locations as compared to other breeds.

Blaming the violence on the race of dog tells us more about the reporter than the news story.

Without knowing anything about the owner and the dog, I would rather meet an unleashed Golden Retriever than unleashed Pitbull. Am I wrong thinking like that?

Of course not, and this age-old argument in defence of pit-bulls comes up again and again, with the same point being missed.

Pitbulls could be the sweetest breed in the world, the point is that "when" they attack, it ends up much much worse than your super aggressive chihuaha. And in some cases 1 to 1 a man can not win the fight.

There a few breeds like that (e.g. mastiffs) but pitbulls are one of the most popularly owned dogs in this category.

I will agree with this. I don’t think Pit Bull types are inherently more likely to bite. I just think that they cause a lot more damage when they do bite. Most minor bites are probably unreported. House cats bite and claw all the time and no one reports it because the damage is minor.

> House cats bite and claw all the time and no one reports it because the damage is minor.

Just jumping in here to say that if your house cat bites you and draws blood you should absolutely go to a doctor ASAP because cat mouths are nasty and cat bites often get very seriously infected (like, "lose your hand" infected) very quickly.

I have been around house cats for almost my entire life and have been bit and scratched countless times and I never have had any wound that has had an infection as a result. So would like to see the actual statistics on how often people lose their hands from their pet cat biting them.

Not that I am saying one shouldn't use applicable wound care but find it difficult to believe that you must visit a doctor right away or else you will get a bad infection and lose a limb.

cf. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15456433/

"Appropriate early treatment of cat bites of the hand is the key to success. Treatment with antibiotics, surgical drainage, debridement and copious irrigation, and use of corticosteroids in some cases, proved to be effective. Hand elevation and intensive physiotherapy after a short period of immobilization is critical. We believe that prophylactic antibiotics should be given even in case of a minor infection following cat bites of the hand. Clear guidelines for clinical recognition of infection, hospital admission and management are provided in our study."

That's a study of people already visiting the hospital for a cat bite, which implies they were fairly serious wounds. Of course if you have a serious enough wound to go to the hospital over and possibly get plastic surgery to repair, yes there is a serious risk of infection obviously. The OP was implying that ANY cat bite that breaks the skin means you should rush to the doctor which that paper does not prove.

Furthermore, I already acknowledge that proper wound care should not be ignored.

+1. One of my clients got scratched on her wrist by a house cat she had nurtured for years. She ended up spending a significant amount of time in the hospital with a serious infection that nearly resulted in amputation.

At first I was completely agreeing with you and found parent's sentiment misguided. But, then I thought what if we took this to an extreme and generalized about humans? Human violence isn't always uniformly distributed amongst the races, but we try not to jump to conclusions about supposed racial genetic predispositions. I think the dog deserves the benefit of the doubt is what I'm saying. But that's also not accounting that some dogs have been bred for violence. So I guess you are right in some ways and wrong in others.

I have been attacked by 2 packs of dogs...neither were wild, just dogs that were not leashed up and formed a pack in the neighborhoods.

One pack was formed of smaller dogs, mostly of the puntable size. The other more medium size, family friendly dogs.

Neither packs contained pit-bulls. It does not matter about the breeds in the pack, just the size and number. 5-10 Jack Russel terriers can mess you up just as easily as 3-4 Labradors.

I notice that the discussion of dangerous dogs now is focused on pit-bulls, I remember as a kid that the German Shepherd and Rottweiler always seemed scary.

Artificial selection over generations has left pit bulls a mentally unstable breed.

32 of the fatality descriptions identify a breed. 26 of them list "pit bull."

So, 81% of fatality descriptions that identify a breed list "pit bull."

That's a much higher rate of pit bull involvement than I had heard of in the past.

I think it's a few things: pit bulls are a very large and strong breed, aggressive people prefer large, powerful dogs, aggressive people don't train/socialize their dogs to be nice to other people.

I agree.

Though you could make a similar argument for domesticated animals like dogs. Especially larger dogs. Or humans! There are a lot of things that can be dangerous to humans, especially children, when they fly off the handle.

There is always a risk. Most animals function emotionally like humans, but have no good way of communicating emotions like frustration and anger except through aggression.

But locking up animals in cages - those who easily have the capacity to understand what you are doing to them - is cruel and immoral. So you either have to live with them or leave them be in their natural habitat.

You wouldn't lock up a human either for having the capacity to harm someone else.

So if you end up with an orphaned gorilla in your care, morally you are between a rock and a hard place.

This is exactly it. The argumentation "it is still a wild animal" is fundamentally lazy and seeks to banish a random class of organism to a space where it is okay to be needlessly cruel because understanding how it works is too hard.

I cordially disagree. I counter argue that anthropomorphizing of animals is fundamentally flawed. What understanding are you talking about? That with understanding the wild animal will not kill and maim randomly? As per other comments it seems evidence is against this reasoning.

Highly experienced trainers who understand very well their animals end up dead. I think it is quite a high grounded statement to call professional zoo-keepers and related professionals lazy.

The only understanding i can see is that having wild animals as pets should be banned as they normally are in most jurisdictions.

> I counter argue that anthropomorphizing of animals is fundamentally flawed.

and I further retort that humans are animals, and that classifying humans into "something other than animals" is fundamentally flawed.

Why are so many humans wont on forgetting that we're an animals too?

> The only understanding i can see is that having wild animals as pets should be banned as they normally are in most jurisdictions.

I suppose owning humans as pets is already banned in all jurisdictions, so I think we agree on this.

I wonder how much religion factors into the belief that humans are a fundamentally different category. Abrahamic religions certanly rely on this idea. No idea about others.

I think it is more fundamental to human nature than can be explained by religion. Just hang around in tech circles and listen to them talk about other people and you'll see they consider themselves to be in some fundamentally different category from the rest of humanity.

Why are humans unlike (other) animals? Because only humans debate whether they are.

>Highly experienced trainers who understand very well their animals end up dead.

Humans who understand other humans also get killed by humans - at rates other animals will never match.

In the ballpark of ~20,000 murders are committed every year in the US, yet even though there are 90 million dogs in that same country, only about 30 to 50 people are killed by dogs.

It would be pointless comparing the number of fatal bear attacks, because the numbers per year are usually 0-2, and usually by wild animals, not ones in captivity.

At the end of the day the most dangerous thing to a human is another human. No other animal comes remotely close.

What is the point being made here? Humans are liable for themselves and their actions - animals are not. It ultimately doesn't matter if an animal has a justification for its actions; being unable to take responsibility for them, from a human perspective, is the biggest separator between human and animal behaviour.

> being unable to take responsibility for them, from a human perspective, is the biggest separator between human and animal behaviour.

That is true, but also not related to what your GP was talking about IMHO.

I understood their comment as coming from a perspective of either "you should fear what you can't understand/explain - and you can't really understand animals" or "it's their nature to be violent, it doesn't matter whether you understand them", either of which I think is flawed.

You made a much better point.

I just have a habit of picking at reasoning even if I agree with the conclusion. Sometimes you end up with a more concise and to the point argument at the end of that, and in this case it came from you!

Animals are liable for their actions. The punishment is usually death by lethal injection or firing squad.

The stronger argument is that animals aren't as aware as humans which actions will have consequences. Animals do have customs about what's okay and what's not, but they often don't align with human society's laws.

It's "ignorance of the law is no excuse" taken to an extreme.

I don't really agree. While humans can and do punish animals, it doesn't follow that the animal itself is liable for its own actions. In pretty much all cases, the owner of the animal is the one liable - and animals without owners are liable to nobody. An animal without an owner might still be killed - for example, if it is a danger to people - but I don't think you can call that just punishment.

For another argument, consider that if you went into the woods and were mauled by a bear, nobody who found your body would feel the need to confront the bear and hold it responsible. The bear would not need to be convicted in order to be acted against.

> "...at rates other animals will never match."

This is because we make the right decision to not live in close proximity to lions, tigers, bears, apes and all the other menagerie of dangerous creatures we share Earth with.

> "...only about 30 to 50 people are killed by dogs"

It's not a coincidence that this number is low. We keep domestic cats and dogs as pets precisely because their propensity and - in some cases - ability to kill us is low. If bears were as commonly kept as household pets as dogs you would see a completely different result.

And even further, we friggin’ engineered them genetically through artificial selection to be that way.

Culture has done the same to humans, generally selecting for pro-social traits. (Yes, there are outliers.)

That is not what it "seeks" at all.

You can call an animal "wild" without also condemning it to a cruel fate like the circus. It's not black and white.

I don't personally know what the solution is, but I'm sure there's a more elegant middle ground between "let it roam free among humans" and "cage and torture it until it dies."

This resonates with me. It deeply disturbs me that other animals still don’t have rights on parity with humans.

I can play devil’s advocate and make the ethical argument that animal lives have more intrinsic value than human lives. For one, they are innately innocent due to their (as we currently understand) more limited capacity for reasoning. This limited reasoning dismisses blame when they do things we see as wrong (similar to the way we do for children) and also limits their capacity to cause significant harm to the planet.

I will always side with other animals over man. If I could only rescue one organism from a burning building and had to choose between a human or another animal, I’d choose the other animal. If I had to choose which species becomes extinct tomorrow, it would be humans. We are a plague to this planet and solar system.

Selfish humans, obsessed with self preservation, will easily disagree with this judgement.

As an anti-speciesist vegetarian, I’d like to note that the above viewpoint probably sounds as extreme and incoherent to me as it does to most other people.

Parity as regards rights should be based on interests. There is nothing special about life itself. A mouse’s interests are not on par with the interests of a child, and saving the child would generally result in the least amount of suffering.

I did my best to take the parent comment seriously, but I really need to stress how ridiculous it is. Please don’t assume that that is a common viewpoint amongst vegan or vegetarians. It ultimately commits the same error: devaluing the life of an individual because it happens to belong to the “wrong” species.

I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, so I don't know why you're conflating my devil's advocate argument with those philosophies.

> A mouse’s interests are not on par with the interests of a child

For an anti-speciesist, this is a very anthropocentric and speciesist statement.

I would argue that saving the child would cause greater suffering[0], not only because the human condition unto itself is rife with suffering, but because we have the greatest capacity and demonstrated ability to cause grave harm to all species and to the planet, more so than any other living being.

The voluntary human extinction movement[1] is a very real movement, however ridiculous you find it to be.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering-focused_ethics#Argum...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Mov...

I’m sorry. To clarify, the entirety of a mouse’s interests are less than the interests of a child. This includes external interests, like the interests of the parents, etc.

I agree regarding the generally higher capacity of healthy humans to experience tremendous suffering, and also the human ability to cause tremendous suffering. I do see a tension between those facts and my contention that saving a human results in less suffering. In my mind, human experience falls on a 3D plane, with positive/negative on the y-axis, severity on the x-axis and complexity on the z-axis.

The human ability to experience complex emotions like inspiration, jealousy, etc. make our interests slightly unique and weigh more as compared to most animals. Add on top of that the social aspect of interests (eg a parent has an interest in the well being of their child), and suddenly the value of human life can take on exponential degrees.

With that in mind, I think an individual should have the choice to end their life if society finds that the net suffering of their continued existence is greater than if they ceased to exist. To that end, human extinction is antithetical to my understanding because it implies forcing individuals to end their lives involuntarily. It’s the same with a pig. I wouldn’t eat a pig unless he somehow gained healthy adult-level sentience and told me he wanted me to eat him and that that would fulfill some deep desire of his. I know that example sounds absurd, but consequently, because no animal has a level of sentience complex enough to consent to being murdered, I refrain from eating any animals at all.

If you still want to engage, I have a question. I’m curious why, if you feel that humans are such a huge cause of suffering to, as you put it, innocent animals, you aren’t vegan or vegetarian?

I got a dog recently, and read lots of things online about 'crate training', and had lots of people advising me it was the way to go, so I got a 'crate' and tried it.

What a load of shit lol, it's a cage. They should call the process 'cage conditioning', the dog was fully aware he was locked in a cage and didn't like it.

Abandoned it very quickly, had a lot more success with just patience and positive reinforcement.

https://youtu.be/4dwjS_eI-lQ

In that video they show how far they still are from domesticated foxes compared to modern dogs. Well, domesticated pretty much means, "desirable traits for human benefit" when you think about it, the same applies to humans, but we call that civilized or sociable. Theres a joke in the comments, something like the fox goes "I'm okay with you being a meter away from me... but let's keep it that way." The dog, "you cant ignore my love!"

But I fully disagree on the assessment that larger dogs are more wild. Smaller dogs tend to be complete violent assholes for little to no reason. Larger dogs tend to need more reason to become aggressive, unless they came from an abusive environment. I volunteered at an animal shelter for about a year (admittedly to pick up women originally). But I gladly hung out with pits and shepherds from abused pasts so they can be rehabilitated for new homes. I could never do the same with anything smaller than a border collie. Just never worked out. Large working breed dogs are crazy easy for me to calm down, and I am generally not a brave man. Dogs have been bred the last 40k some odd years to genetically want to be with humans. Then some assholes the past few thousand years decided to breed for looks and tiny sizes instead of companionship. That's what makes the larger working dogs great. Listen to and love humans, and have a job to do is their breeding line. Not just looks, which can breed out the friendly part.

Caveat though, there are some pit lines that are a bit whack. Sadly, originally they were bred for fighting other dogs, but super strong friendliness for humans, to avoid the owner getting bit. Which is why they're cuddle bugs with people and are dicks to other dogs. This breed attracted a bunch of dipshits that bred them for just pure aggression, then add on the abuse. So yea... those are the sad cases.

A big reason that little dogs tends to be more violent is that they have to compensate their size by agression and appear larger than they are to fend off predators.

My bodeguero (spanish terrier) is the most cuddly animal I have ever met but he will 1v1 the sun if I let him.

My thing is, I've never been bit by a dog bigger than a border collie. I've been bit by chihuahuas, Scottish terriers and whatever those small scraggly white dogs are. I can never remember their names. And these were considered home ready dogs. I feel safer around an abused pitbull than by a "well behaved" chihuahua. I'm not being funny or macho about it. I'm dead serious. While an adult guy like me doesn't care about the little rat bite, that's going to traumatize a little kid away from liking dogs. Not to mention the breeding of extremely poor body traits that torture some of these dogs. They may look cute, but these poor things succumb to a wide range of abnormalities... I guess I'm just bias in general. That whole tea cup dog craze made me really polarized on the issue. I hate self interested, abusive breeders.

> While an adult guy like me doesn't care about the little rat bite, that's going to traumatize a little kid away from liking dogs.

Our neighbor has a "scraggly little white dog" as you describe.

It bit my (then three year old) daughter while she was riding her bike a year ago.

It certainly didn't do any favors for her trust of dogs.

Doesn't help that everyone and their mother seems to leave their dogs off leashes and then just say "oh don't worry, he's nice" as my kids are screaming their heads off while a creature roughly as big as they are sniffs and yips at them.

If nothing else, people tend to to put more effort into properly training large dogs out of any human-aggressive tendencies. It's a lot easier to view your Chihuahua nipping at someone's ankles as cute, compared to your pitbull doing the exact same thing.

Honestly, the biggest problem I've had with large dogs is poor socialization in how to play with humans. A dog doing properly-social play by dog standards (play-bows, carefully light nipping, etc) can still be a really worrying experience for an adult if the dog is 100lbs.

I'd say that foxes are well on their way to domestication.

I've been watching some SaveAFox videos on youtube, and their foxes display a whole range of social skills. Some like Finnegan love being handled, but others not as much.

Those specific breeds of foxes don't really make for indoor pets though, as they like to mark their territory.

I love animals and had dogs and cats living with my family. When I had my first kid, my wife had a large dog (a mixture between a labrador and a german shepard, and probably others - she found it as a puppy attached to a rope in the forest, left to die).

The dog was extremely quiet, socialized and what not. When we brought our baby from the hospital, he was really curious. We left him sniff the baby and the dog apparently understood that the thing that was brought in was important and decided to protect it (he was sleeping in front of the baby's room and would not let any stranger approach.

I had a similar case when I was a baby - my parents left me with their dog sleeping next to my crib outside and it would just do a "woof" without even waking up if someone would approach.

And then, one day, I left the dog alone with my son. My son was in that sort of cage made of ropes he can wander in and the dog was outside. I came back to the room and I found

... the dog licking my son face pressed to the ropes (unexpected happy ending)

I was really scared because it could have been something different (my childhood friend was bit to his face by his own dog, a normal one, not pitbull style but Great Dane IIRC). Nothing ever happended but still, this was this one time where it could have had happen and it would have been MY fault, not the dog's one.

I now have a cat. Well, my family has it, we just live together. The cat does not interfere with me (except sleeping on my laptop when I am not around) and is extremely found of my younger son (14 yo). I am telling my son to never get his face that close to the cat because she will a day or another scratch him (they are running and jumping together, playing). She scratched my leg once (and would not left from under my son's bed for that day because she was probably scared of what she did) - but that could have had been my face.

Accidents happen and animals are animals. This is not something bad - just something one has to be aware of.

My parents had a husky when I was born. The moment it bit my face was the last moment it spent in the house. Lived in the garage until it was (quickly) rehomed. I don't blame it; it wasn't like it was trying to rip my face off. I think it was just trying to assert itself in the pack order ahead of me. Except the pack leaders weren't too fond of that idea.

Ironically, I now love huskies. But would also never get one, because I live in Florida and would not subject such a dog to the weather here.

My grandad raised German shepherds as police dogs. When my father was a boy one of the adolescent dogs nipped his face.

Dad tells me that when he yelled out my grandad calmly grabbed the dogs collar, walked it around the back of the barn out of the way.

My dad, recovered from the shock and not badly injured just a scratch was on his way to the barn to tell his dad that all was okay and not to be too hard on the dog when BOOM shotgun blast rang out from that direction.

Different times and a story that shocked dog loving me - but in general dogs have had that drastic selection pressure from many thousands of generations.

Gorillas not so much.

I love animals (especially dogs, but now that my family has that cat, I slowly soften) and I think this was absolutely the best thing to do.

As you are saying, there is the evolution aspect, but also the fact that he cut short a possible string of serious problems.

This is also the reason I am for euthanasia of animals in shelters past a month (the time left for the owners to find a dog that escaped). Keeping them in cages is torture for the animals.

It is not that they realize they will die, if this is done correctly.

This is also why I am against zoos and circuses with animals.

I think we went into some kind of multiple personality spilt when it comes to animals : we eat them after they have suffered (I eat meat myself, but I would prefer to pay more for meat from animals that were slaughtered in a human way), we do not want to stop the suffering of caged animals, we keep large dogs in small apartments, we cry when we see a lion eating a gazela in the wild, etc.

> Though you could make a similar argument for domesticated animals like dogs. Especially larger dogs. Or humans! There are a lot of things that can be dangerous to humans, especially children, when they fly off the handle.

Dogs, regardless of size are safe to coexist with humans provided they are treated appropriately from a sustenance and behavior/training perspective. That's the result of traits associated with being an animal living in a pack social structure, along with thousands of years of breeding. When dog behavior crosses a line, the dog is euthanized.

> You wouldn't lock up a human either for having the capacity to harm someone else.

We do. When humans demonstrate a lack of control that puts others at risk, we apply progressive discipline to discourage future misbehavior. Fines, probation in various flavors, jail, and finally prison. If you steal a phone from an unlocked car, it's usually misdemeanor theft, if you break down my door to steal a phone, it's a felony burglary.

> So if you end up with an orphaned gorilla in your care, morally you are between a rock and a hard place.

It is really a ranking of priorities. I'm not an ethicist, but generally speaking, the preservation of human life is usually a primary moral imperative.

I think you are overdoing it, what OP clearly had in mind is that we all have the capacity for harm, yet not all humans are locked up simply because of this potential. I sure do have capacity to easily kill a fellow human in various ways, so does everybody I know and presumably so do you. There are multiple reasons why this capacity is never utilized, but that's another topic.

You are arguing few steps further about a person who realized this capacity and what society does to them.

I don't read much more into that.

> Dogs, regardless of size are safe to coexist with humans provided they are treated appropriately from a sustenance and behavior/training perspective.

Debatable...

"In 1994, the most recent year for which published data are available, an estimated 4.7 million dog bites occurred in the United States, and approximately 799,700 persons required medical care (1). Of an estimated 333,700 patients treated for dog bites in emergency departments (EDs) in 1994 (2), approximately 6,000 (1.8%) were hospitalized (3)."

Half the people in jails in the USA haven't hurt anyone physically. We seem to lock people up just fine without any display of harm. We are a strange animal indeed.

> But locking up animals in cages - those who easily have the capacity to understand what you are doing to them - is cruel and immoral. So you either have to live with them or leave them be in their natural habitat.

I agree completely. I'll go as far as to say the idea of pets must perish.

You don't have to lock up a pet. Plenty of dogs lead happy contented lives, with family who take them for walks whenever asked, or even have free range of a generous rural territory.

"Pet" can simply mean non-human family member.

> You wouldn't lock up a human either for having the capacity to harm someone else.

If a toddler could rip your hands off, I wouldn't imagine it would be free to roam society as usual.

I'm not sure it's fair to call a gorilla a "wild animal" when they've been so socialized that they live in a human home, use the light switch and the bathroom, go on walks with the local kids and have deep familial relationships with humans, the only other animals they know. That's not to claim that I have any idea how dangerous or not the situation might have been but "wild" really sounds like the wrong word here. Human culture was all the poor fellow knew, despite not being human.

further, if one has the opportunity to talk to people working in a forensic psychology unit, they might discover the presence of the "wild animal" in the human and that all of us are still a lot closer to that wild animal than we like to admit.

I wish there was more literature about this, both academic and fictional. I've always found it amusing how far people go to believe that we're detached from the wild animal in us. From conception to some young age I'd say we barely differ from animals (hence why some animals are compared to humans at various, usually single-digit, ages). Then even once we're grown, there are many situations where I think, surely this is what a regular animal experiences too: looking for something and absentmindedly searching, having fun running around with friends, identifying a dangerous situation and either taking action to defend loved ones or flee, etc.

I recommend Jane Goodall's memoirs (In the Shadow of Man, The Chimpanzees of Gombe, and more), I think they provide a fairly balanced view on our relationship with our near ancestors (what Chimpanzees can and cannot do).

Minor point: Chimpanzees are our relatives, not our ancestors.

Still, a raging 80 kg human can be a handful to deal with. A raging 200 kg gorilla is much worse. There is a lot that can be done to assimilate a gorilla into a human society, but they aren't human and the differences, while possible to understand at a certain effort, may end up surprising you.

My cat still tries to hunt my foot when bored. If she were a tiger, I would have a very serious problem to deal with (it's hard to buy shoes individually)

> My cat still tries to hunt my foot when bored. If she were a tiger, I would have a very serious problem to deal with (it's hard to buy shoes individually)

But how about a lion?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btuxO-C2IzE

Still, a raging 80 kg human can be a handful to deal with.

Exactly how big a handful becomes much clearer when someone close to you spends long enough manic and without sleep, then goes psychotic.

Trying to hold my 15kg toddler when he goes crazy has given me a fairly good idea of what that would be like.

I would have said the same when my kids were young.

When my sister went crazy in exactly the manner described, I learned that I was wrong. Totally wrong.

That’s potentially true, I have no experience with that.

What I was really trying to say though was that I can barely control him now. I can’t imagine I would be able to when he’s 80kgs.

The big difference is that you have to put up with the toddler's tantrum for perhaps 15 minutes. You can even choose to walk away if you need to - the toddler won't go anywhere.

A manic adult is more coherent, but goes on for days. I mean that literally - mania keeps you from sleeping.

Absolutely. However, that is a different criteria than wild/not wild.

Bulls are domesticated animals, after all.

I guess it just means we have a fairly good idea of what will set them off, and can prevent that.

>Still, a raging 80 kg human can be a handful to deal with. A raging 200 kg gorilla is much worse.

the history of our civilization proves that raging 80 kg human with a weapon is a much worse than any other animal. Even mammoths went down before us. This is why we took over that planet and are an apex predator and are a most dangerous animal around.

True, but, without weapons, I'll still bet on the gorilla.

How about other peoples rights? Not everyone can be around adult gorillas in modern city.

Possibly, but consider how often people hit others or throw things when they get mad, and now imagine the person is a 350 lbs bundle of muscles with reduced higher faculties.

Also, people tend to "hold back" unless they're in a true rage or have some other diminished capacity (temporary like from drugs and alcohol or permanent). Animals tend not to, which is why, pound for pound, they're a bit more frightening to deal with. I'd rather be in a fight against my 200lb BJJ training partner (who was all muscle, after some sessions I was sore for days as it felt like I'd been hit repeatedly by a truck) than the poorly trained (or poorly socialized, maybe it was trained) 80lb German Shepherd that chased me into my apartment building (he got loose from his owner who had it on a lead, fortunately I had a head start). At least I'd have confidence my training partner wouldn't latch on and deliberately tear flesh from bone.

> German Shepherd that chased me into my apartment building

This is a story I want to hear.

I never figured out if the guy got a dog that was ill-tempered, or if he made it ill-tempered. But my apartment building (loved the building, hated the neighbors) had no weight limit on dogs (learned after moving in, I had no pets so never even checked the policy). My first encounter with this particular dog was walking from my car in the parking lot back to the building. I heard it growling, guy held it on the lead while I made a brisk walk (not run) to the building.

My second encounter was actually inside. I lived on the first floor, not sure where he lived, but he was coming the opposite direction with the dog. It started dragging him, I hustled up the stairs (I was next to them, fortunately) while he regained control and got it outside.

The third encounter was the one I mentioned. I had returned from the gym (I walked there, it was a mile away) and was at the entrance when I heard the dog to my left. I looked and it was pulling on him, then it was free from him. Fortunately it had about 100' to cover before it would get to me and I got inside in a hurry (keypad entry, so at least there was no fumbling with keys and locks).

I really never wanted to be within 100' of that dog again, but they wouldn't evict him even after that incident. I moved a couple months later.

On the multistate bar exam there is a invariably a version of this question:

“Susie raised a pet squirrel from birth. It was very well-trained, calm, and seemed to think it was a dog. It would come when called, could do tricks, etc.”

There would be some scenario that would follow where the test-taker would be asked to decide whether this indubitably gentle creature was a “wild animal.” The answer is always yes... training, temperament, etc. has nothing to do with it.

(The issue comes up in legal cases — albeit, rarely — due to the different levels of responsibility one has towards others when one’s pet or livestock causes damage or injury. For a “domesticated animal”, the owner usually needs to be negligent in some way. But, for a “wild animal”, the owner is always strictly liable.

Which is odd in many ways... you may have less liability when your vicious pit bull attacks than when your pet sloth lashes out at someone tormenting it. For, the sloth is by definition “wild” and the dog is, by definition, “domesticated.”

Is there a clear process by which the law will recategorize some species into domesticated?

Not really- it’s incredibly rare for this to happen - looking at Wikipedia the only newly domesticated species in over a century are some silver foxes in Russia as part of a scientific research program, and pet hedgehogs in the USA.

Probably not. Take for example reindeer herding by Sami people, it's usually said that those animals are half domesticated, so you shouldn't draw a line like that.

To be fair, I'm not entirely sure that humans shouldn't be classified as "wild animal(s)" as well if that's the case.

I have more respect for middle school principals nowadays.

I guess this was true when we were still practicing slavery? The owner would be held strictly liable for slave inflicted attacks, so humans would be wild animals by that definition.

What do you mean by “we”?

Slave suppliers - those at the start of the chain - often sell those from their region. Across centuries, humans from all parts of the world have enslaved each other.

An infinitesimal fraction of humans have ever owned a slave.

I know how the pronoun was intended to be used, and I’m not attributing any ill-intent. It’s perfectly appropriate to use “we” when referring to humans in general; such as “back before we discovered nuclear power” or “back when we discovered antibiotics.”

But, for something as recent (and ongoing) as slavery, you may want to think twice before using such a sweeping pronoun. A good portion of the US, for instance, have great-grandparents who literally fought in a war to abolish slavery. More subtly, the use of “we” seems to impute blame or responsibility on those living for actions taken by a very small group of people. It’s neither accurate nor useful.

> More subtly, the use of “we” seems to impute blame or responsibility on those living for actions taken by a very small group of people. It’s neither accurate nor useful.

Saying that it was a very small number of people sounds a mite ridiculous to me. Multiple cultures throughout history have supported/accepted it.

It is also a reminder. These weren’t storybook monsters, they were humans, and we should be reminded of that lest we regress.

We’re certainly not to blame, but we are responsible for not going back there.

Humanity?

I guess given my origins you can also read it as either country or race, but that wasn’t the intent since it isn’t that exclusive. It’s been a fairly consistent theme throughout history somewhere.

Once I read the story, I could easily predict the comments that would follow on HN: > because there is no controlling a 200-pound angry wild animal when its upset:

>I'm not sure it's fair to call a gorilla a "wild animal" when they've been so socialized that they live in a human home

Usually gorillas are considered peaceful compared with chimpanzees and humans.

gorilla and mirror videos are a trip. (or the leopard + elephants and mirror)

Reminded me of a story from Bangladesh where a person took in a tiger cub as "pet" after killing its mother. Years later the tiger, now considerably grown, escaped from captivity and killed the owner(the same person). So the warning applies for Tigers too.

It sounds like justice to me :)

Exactly. My first thought was of stupid things I did when I was angry as a teenager. Then I thought of a Gorilla having a similar burst of anger.

Fascinating to hear about Travis. Allegedly he could drive a car! But there's speculation that the Xanax he was given that day might have been the cause of the attack. I also wonder if he was getting a proper diet.

Wild is applied because animals behave in way we don't understand and it's much easier to chalk it up to the fact that they act without thought or reason, which we know is not true.

Animals think and reason, just because we don't understand their process doesn't mean they don't have a process.

Conversely unless we completely explain all of 'civilized' societies rules to these animals and secure agreement that they will follow all these rules, their is little chance they will behave within those guidelines.

I spent time with outlaw motorcycle clubs, and I would consider many of those groups the same as a gorilla or bear, the only difference would be that the bikers usually know the laws of society, but they reject hem.

Would you have the same reaction towards a mentally retarded orphan growing into a very strong man? Lenny, from Of Mice And Men?

My immediate reaction is horror at the unspeakable cruelty of selling a person - a participant in society - into caged slavery in the circus. Imagine the feeling of confusion and betrayal he must have felt. Imagine the trauma from suddenly having personhood privileges withdrawn. I don't see any justification for that. The article rather lightly glosses over the gory details of that shameful episode.

I think you can acknowledge the evils of the circus during that time and still also acknowledge that a gorilla is far stronger than most adult men, and more difficult to reason with should it get angry or violent.

This worry over the potential for harm was the justification used in the killing of Harambe.

Humans have been exhibited in this way too in exhibits praised by the scientific community. The practice only died out after the horrors of the holocaust made scientific racism unfashionable.

The low point may have been the New York zoo displaying a black man in a cage with monkeys in the early 1900s. The black clergymen who protested were shut down by the city’s mayor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo

A chimpanzee is already hard to control. I cannot imagine having a gorilla around.

An angry chimpanzee can completely disfigure you in an instant. A gorilla is even more powerful than that.

People underestimate how strong apes are.

https://youtu.be/_9L7MugvoIE

Two very different apes, however. Chimpanzees hunt and kill monkeys. Gorillas are mostly vegetarian.

Interesting fact, thank you. I wasn't familiar with this.

Watch some nature documentaries, wild researchers can often go and sit in close proximity with the gorillas, if humans are calm so are them. You wouldn't dare to do this with chimpanzees.

Yeah... chimpanzees can be very violent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

If this topic interests you, I recommend this paper and book by linguist and psychologist Michael Tomasello. He explores how human babies differ from other young primates and the role that collective human knowledge plays in the development process.

http://www.biolinguagem.com/ling_cog_cult/tomasello_1999_hum...

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674005822

Jack was acting as an assistant to a disabled railway signalman in South Africa.

> in his nine years of employment with the railway company, Jack never made a single mistake.

I wonder how many of human workers today could be replaced by baboons and the job would be done better.

> The baboon was paid twenty cents a day, and half a bottle of beer each week.

I don't know what part of the sentence is more amazing, the beginning, middle or the end.

I swear everytime i click on a medium article there is a new way they have thought of to keep me from reading it. Is reading without an account not possible anymore? I didn't read anything on it in the last few weeks, so i should not have hit any limit.

Just use incognito mode.

Most interesting line if this article for me:

> The ape cost £300, about £25,000 in today’s money (or about $34,000USD).

Holy cow, has there been a 10,000% inflation of the value of a pound in one century?

Well, there were two world wars in the meantime?

We also decoupled the dollar from gold.

Not as bad as 10,000%, but the bank of england estimates an average inflation rate of 4.2%[1], so it's within an order of magnitude. (25M - 300) / 300 is only like 8200%, but bank of england puts the current value of 300 1917 pounds at 21283.44 2020 pounds, which is "only" 6994% ([21283.44 - 300] / 300).

[1]: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in... 300 pounds, 1917, and 2020.

This kind of thing is fascinating to me. I don't think we really know the extent to which primate behavior in relation to ours is cultural vs. genetic; after all, things like this haven't often been tried! Obviously the genetic differences are huge, but stories like this make me think that our cultural development over time may be a bigger factor in the difference between our species than many assume.

And humans don't do much better absent human society: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

Yup... I mean, you wouldn't keep a wolf around your house either, but dogs (if well-trained and with responsible owners) are usually no problem. So who knows, if humans would breed and train chimps (gorillas are too big) the same way as dogs, in time they probably could be "integrated" into society. Of course, that would bring with it a whole new set of moral issues...

A similar case where a chimpanzee was raised as a human child by scientists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gua_(chimpanzee)

It's also the plot of the movie with Ronald Reagan from 1951 called "Bedtime for Bonzo"

Is it just me or does Medium actively not want me to read the article?

I get you. They really like to eat up screen space to let you know what website you're on.

It's not just that. They won't let me read it without an account. I don't want a medium account. The only workaround is to clear cookies or open it in a private window and I don't care enough to bother doing either of those things.

I really don't understand why people use a mediocre blogging platform that seems to be dedicated to inconveniencing their users as much as humanly possible.

I grew up very near to Uley yet had no idea about this. I’m amazed how quickly it seems to have been forgotten. I wonder why it was? It seems some people did know about it so maybe no one thought it was noteworthy. Perhaps the demographic changes in the countryside made it harder for that sort of history to be passed down. Or maybe it wasn’t really forgotten at all but it just wasn’t widely known or talked about.

This article and the Sun article linked within it are extremely similar, I wonder why

Karl Pilkington would love this

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