What Binti Jua Knew
A toddler falls over a railing, 24 feet down, into the gorilla enclosure of the Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago. There he lies, unconscious, among seven apes, some with poundage and power exceeding that of an adult man. As one of them approaches the boy, onlookers tense.
But Binti Jua, an 8-year-old female gorilla, picks up the boy, and, carrying him along with her own infant, gently hands him over to zoo staff.
This stunning event in 1996 earned Binti Jua global headlines (and can be seen, if in grainy video, on YouTube). It was an incident that no one who witnessed it -- in person or online -- could forget.… Seguir leyendo »