Some very sad news from Germany this week, where Gana, an 11-year-old gorilla in the Muenster Zoo, has been raising her baby boy, Claudio. However, the world is now in mourning as Claudio suddenly died, possibly from a heart defect.
Heartbroken, Gana kept carrying her dead baby on her back as she had when he was alive, and kept looking back again in the hope of finding him recovered. She held her little child up, desperately searching for signs of movement in his limp body, and sat cradling him. But of course, nothing could bring poor Claudio back to life.
Zoo visitors were visibly moved and many cried upon seeing Gana’s grief. But no one should really be surprised by the depth of emotion that Gana showed in her mourning. Animals feel pain, fear, anger, love, and grief. Mother cows bellow for their calves, who are taken away so that humans can drink the milk that they make solely to nourish their babies. Dogs, beavers, and monkeys take pity on orphaned animals and adopt them as their own. Animals – from pigs to porpoises – show concern for humans, too, by going to great lengths to rescue us from peril. (And look how we repay them!)
Yet people often look away from this glaring evidence of sentience. By convincing themselves that animals “aren’t like us”, humans have justified inflicting all kinds of horrors on animals. But if people torturing primates in laboratories or slaughtering gorillas in the Congo could look into Gana’s shattered heart, they might wake up to the true cost of their actions.
