Talk about a watercooler story. Everywhere I’ve been this week, people were watching the video and talking about the events that unfolded at the Cincinnati Zoo this past Saturday evening. A little boy somehow managed to defeat whatever security the zoo had in place to find himself sitting in the moat of the gorilla exhibit […]
Talk about a watercooler story. Everywhere I’ve been this week, people were watching the video and talking about the events that unfolded at the Cincinnati Zoo this past Saturday evening.
A little boy somehow managed to defeat whatever security the zoo had in place to find himself sitting in the moat of the gorilla exhibit next to a 450-pound, 17 year-old endangered western lowland Silverback named Harambe.
In the video, you can hear the people screaming to the little boy, even hear the mother telling him how much she loves him.
https://www.facebook.com/wlwt5/videos/10153471112626852/
The image of the gorilla looking confused holding the little boy by the waist of his pants is not one to easily comprehend at first. You don’t see little boys sitting next to lowland gorillas in the zoo that often.
Other than to drag the little boy roughly through the water in the moat, it doesn’t appear as if the gorilla means to harm the boy. But who knows what might be going through the mind of a gorilla? What might a wild gorilla do to a small living creature he suddenly finds in his home?
Even if he means no harm, at 450-pounds, Harambe probably wasn’t aware of his own strength next to that of a small boy.
I can see how the only course of action from the zoo’s point of view was to immediately eliminate the danger and put down Harambe, even though many say the gorilla’s actions showed he was trying to protect the boy.
Who wants to be the person who says: “Let’s wait to see what the gorilla will do before we shoot him?”
Who’s at fault? The zoo for lax security? The little boy’s mom for lax supervision?
That little boy, if he remembers, will have quite the story to tell for the rest of his life, although one with a sad ending for the zoo.
In any event, when the story broke at the Cincinnati Zoo on Saturday evening, WLWT scrambled to cover the story.
WLWT is the NBC affiliate owned by Hearst, and ironically, the movie King Kong was playing on NBC in prime that night.
Subsequently, the traffic on WLWT’s digital platforms broke records, the station says.
According to Google Analytics, WLWT’s digital platforms, WLWT.com, WLWT Mobile and the WLWT App, generated 10.9 million page views in the two-day span, with Sunday ranking No. 1 all-time with 5.78 million page views, followed by Monday at No. 2 with 5.16 million views.
According to the most recent monthly ratings from comScore, WLWT’s combined digital platforms have the most users of any Cincinnati TV or radio station.
WLWT’s Facebook page, according to Pete Salkowski, WLWT’s creative services director, reached more than 1.1 million people on Sunday, May 29.
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