You don’t want it higher than 4’ because people wouldn’t be able to readily see over it.
Climbability is reduced by making it smooth.
I said, much earlier today, I would support the 4’ height standard. That would not fundamentally change the experience. It also would not approach the impossibility-of-entry standard some have been waving about.
Zoos and pools are apples and oranges, but if we’re going with that analogy then pools have fences or walls around them and so do zoos. Once you’re in the pool area there is, you know, a pool there. Once you’re in the zoo there is, you know, a zoo there. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Someone manages to drown themselves? Someone manages to toss themselves into a moat? Well, it’s not like you didn’t know it was there.
There’s also the problem of what the giraffe might catch from your kid.
For all I know “wonder-dad” was at work, earning a living, and that’s why he wasn’t at the zoo that day. Do you have some personal knowledge of that man’s location, or are you just trying to make insinuations?
I remember this one time, I think at the National Zoo in DC maybe, there was this one spider exhibit. I was walking past it and there’s this big web filled with some sort of large orb type spiders and - it’s totally open! There should have been glass. There wasn’t. This huge web full of spiders maybe two feet from me! I could have stuck my hand in there easily. Of course I didn’t and neither did anyone else. Pretty ballsy display of spiders. It was cool.
Oh well, guess we can’t have cool things 'cause THE CHILDREN.
I’m sure the kid’s mother would disagree with you. Or any mother. Regardless of her responsibility or the zoo’s, a human life trumps an animal’s, regardless. It’s not an equation of numbers, and anyone who feels it does, seems very heartless.
It’s not just numbers. I believe apes are close human relatives and shouldn’t be treated as disposable livestock. I don’t consider them animals. I also think it’s hypocritical to claim human lives have value when they clearly don’t when it’s inconvenient. The whole “why don’t we feed the poor” thing. You buy food for your dog but don’t spend even more feeding the poor??? Let’s not pretend we don’t value our dogs and cats more than our fellow homo sapiens living in other countries.
I’m okay caring more about apes dogs and cats more than humans in other countries. I’m honest with myself and try not to live a life of delusion. People will shoot you for trying to steal their stereo. Stereos are more important than human life. At least I’ve decided the stereo isn’t worth it.
Of course the mother here cares about her kid. She would toss me under a bus to save her kid in a heartbeat. What does that say about the value of human life? Just that it’s pretty darn relative.
Again, nope. Not relative at all. Continue believing that, but you don’t convince me.
So if a person holds a gun up to the head of a gorilla and you and asks a random stranger to choose which he shoots you’d expect that person to choose to save the gorilla?
But this child was not a hypothetical person living in Bumfuckistan. This was an actual child in real trouble and the authorities quite rightly chose to shoot the lesser animal than the human animal.
People who will shoot you for a stereo are sociopaths. And people who are making noises that the kid should have been shot instead of the gorilla are in my opinion showing sociopathic tendencies as well. No well adjusted human adult will value an animal’s life above a human’s life.
If someone breaks into your house and you kill them for that, you’re going to prison for murder.
If someone causes you to reasonably believe that they are an immediate threat to you or your family, a lethal self-defense is considered acceptable.
These are two completely different circumstances - and frankly, neither one is applicable to the situation at the Cincinnati Zoo.
It comes to this: are you actually saying that if you had to choose between killing the gorilla and letting the gorilla kill the kid, that you’d let the gorilla kill the kid?
Some have some sort of room overlooking the exhibit with thick wall and huge “windows” (think aquarium). They are as secure as it can be without resorting to explosives and weaponry.
This is an incredibly stupid idea. Who here suggested that?
We don’t need plexiglass around the chicken and baby goats. I believe gorillas and lions are another thing altogether.
And by the way, the best exhibits I have been to are the ones with glass walls that allow you to be closer without putting anyone in danger. It also cuts on human noise to make the animals more relaxed. I imagine that to them it’s like watching TV on mute.
I’m probably being pedantic, but I’m not persuaded the analogy is apt. There is no requirement that parents keep their children outside the fences surrounding pools. I haven’t researched the underlying rationale, but ISTM that pools are fenced to protect uninvited or inadvertent guests or trespassers from harm. It is possible that children (probably not as young as 4 y.o.) might roam a neighborhood without immediate parental supervision. Fences discourage them from entering a neighbor’s pool where the homeowners might be asleep or away.
Whereas I would be surprised to learn that children entered zoos unaccompanied. There is a presumption that every child present on zoo grounds is there with adequate adult supervision.
Also, the barriers at the zoo have multifaceted purposes. They not only want to keep people out, but to allow certain views of the animals. Sure, they could put in 10’ chainlink fences. Or plexiglass. But for whatever reasons, it seems zoos (and presumably their patrons) prefer being able to look over a relatively low fence. We could always go back to the practice of keeping the animals in small tiled enclosures behind bars. But, to the extent maintaining zoos is something we wish to continue doing, we have adapted them in ways intended to enhance the experiences of both the viewers and the animals. I’m sure there is considerable literature on the reasons for certain exhibit construction.
Here in Chicago, Brookfield Zoo was an early adopter of the moats rather than bars approach. From the 70s on, it was possible to contrast Brookfield with the more compact/traditional setup at Lincoln Park, not to mention the portions of Brookfield that hadn’t been renovated yet.
Hell, let’s be really safe. No one can enter the zoo, but people can download live video feeds of the exhibits. 
Of course. But this being the real world, it is also completely and reasonably foreseeable that in the crowds attending a zoo, where parents and children are expected to wander between exhibits, that some percentage of children will, over the lifetime of the zoo, escape from immediate parental supervision for various reasons. That seems a possibility inherent in the zoo-going experience.
Zoos make allowances for that in various ways - having a “lost child pavilion” is one. Having barriers that ensure a young child doesn’t attempt to join the gorillas, or swim in the alligator pond, is presumably another. It is unreasonable to expect that every parent has a hand on every child at all times in such an attraction.
Not convinced adopting an approximately 4’ “non climbable” fence of the sort detailed above, rather than a 3’ “climbable” (or “crawlable”) fence, around moats and other fall hazards, would have any significant impact on the zoo-going experience.
If you look at the infographic, you will see how this particular exhibit deals with the viewing issue: the gorilla exhibit is slightly higher than the area where the crowd stands. That’s because you can’t see through the fence no matter what it is made of - it is backed by dense bushes.
Nah I’m not going to second guess the zookeepers. They were there, not me. If it were my job to kill the ape because it was a danger, then that’s what I’d do. I don’t think it’s worth playing hypotheticals about what I’d do in this situation or that situation.
It just sucks. The parent bares some blame, but even if it’s never happened before in 38 years, it shouldn’t be able to happen at all. Someone upthread mentioned they thought moats were supposed to keep out both animals and humans. I’m also curious why the apes were able to play around in the water. Obviously it wasn’t designed to be an ape-proof barrier. I’m disappointed we put animals in situations where these accidents can happen at all. Lots of zoos have lots of exhibits a person could easily get into and zoos just give people the benefit of the doubt that they won’t, and we’re willing to kill the animals if that happens. We should rethink that. It’s an Idiocracy and there are too many parents that think if they can bring their kids to something, everything must be totally safe. If it means ticket prices go up or certain exhibits just need to go away, then so be it. It’s been years now, but SD Zoo had a pretty nice ape exhibit and the “get up close” part was completely walled off with thick plexiglass and I didn’t think that ruined my viewing experience. SD Zoo has a lot more money than most zoos do, though.
If, as a society, we pretend we’re serious about preserving endangered animals maybe it’s time we cough up some serious money for that and quit pretending that our current zoo model is working. It’s already been mentioned that the vast majority of attempted species reintroductions have failed. California condors is one example that apparently worked, but most don’t.
We spend so many millions on zoos so kids can be bored and get into trouble and most of the animals are never going back to the wild so what’s the point? It’d be better to spend the money protecting the natural habitats of these animals than stick a few of them in zoos and pretend that works.
The point of zoos is to engage, inspire, and educate people, who would generally have no other opportunities to see such a variety of animals. The value with respect to species conservation is mostly indirect, in that appreciating animals in zoos helps people see the need for wild habitat protection.
The ape-proof barrier is the high smooth concrete wall on the outside edge of the water.
That would be a sad loss. Better to assign responsibility properly, and resist the idea that “everything must be totally safe.”
Well, that’s what the brochure says. When I was a kid I collected those animal index cards they used to have. Yes, I’m old. I also got books and read and watched TV documentaries and read National Geographic. When I finally got to a zoo I already knew way more than anything educational the zoo had to offer.
Zoos are too much like Disney Land and kids just run around like it’s a big playground. Wild animal parks and nature preserves take things more seriously, and it’s not a playground and kids that go there would probably be more serious about it and their parents would hopefully be more responsible about what it is they’re doing there.
I believe I agree with the gist of this. Zoos should not be playgrounds.