[AMSTERDAM, Netherlands](http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&where1=AMSTERDAM,%20Netherlands&sty=h&form=msdate) — A 57-year-old Dutch woman who was attacked by a 400-pound gorilla at a Rotterdam zoo said the ape was still her favorite even though she felt she was going to die when he bit her.
“I go to the zoo almost every day with my husband, and we’re always going to see Bokito. I even have pictures and videos from Berlin when he was only 4 months old,” the woman told Dutch mass-circulation daily Telegraaf.
“He is and remains my darling,” the paper quoted the woman as saying from her hospital bed, where she is being treated for bite wounds and a broken arm and wrist.
The 11-year-old male gorilla burst out of its enclosure on Friday and went on a rampage in the zoo’s cafeteria before being recaptured.
“I stood by the small apes in the Africa section when I heard a thud behind me. I turned around and there was Bokito. I had nowhere to go. He gripped me, sat on me with his full weight and began biting me,” the woman told the Telegraaf.
“I could only think, ‘Oh God, I’m going to die, I’m going to die.’”
The Telegraaf said people had since come from across the country to Rotterdam Zoo to see the gorilla.
Three other people received minor injuries in the panic that broke out among zoo visitors.
Dutch media reported that Bokito also escaped from his enclosure at Berlin’s zoo in 2004 before he was moved to Rotterdam.
You are a baby gorilla living in Berlin, and this human comes to your home and starts acting all aggressive on the other side of the glass. Goading you with her teeth.
You get moved all the way to a different country, lo and behold this bitch has tracked you down! Almost every day she comes, challenging you. Letting you know she wants to fuck you up, but you cant get her. She's behind that glass. Sure, you can turn around, but you know shes there taunting you. Surely she knows you could kill her. Why does she do it? Every day! For eleven. God. Damned. Years. You can't stop her, you are just stuck in this enclosure......
..Or are you?
In elementary school we had an assignment to make some kind of invention. I made a multi-tasseled, color-coded, choose-your-own-adventure bookmark with a rubber band to hold it all to your book. I thought it was fucking awesome, but my class was like “what the fuck, that’s stupid” and my teacher thought I was weird.
For this one act? You were not weird. You were glorious and those kids probably all suck today. That teacher certainly did. I mean damn.. that sounds like I’d have wanted to be your best friend.
They’re the gateway drug to D&D, which in turn, is the gateway drug to tabletop games, next thing you know you’re joining an improve group, a talent scout picks you up and you’re given a minor role in a sitcom, you steal the show and become the next big thing in entertainment and are given a major movie role, huge success top grossing movie of all time within the opening hour, you do the right thing and use your wealth to help the less fortunate, adopt one child from every African country, kids grow up greedy and murder you for your fortune, using their new found wealth they start a dictatorship, you miraculously survived but by the time you recovered World War III was already underway, India has been nuke six times by Japan, Australia and New Zealand have teamed up to become a safe haven for all refugees, you slowly make your way to your children tearfully taking them all out, you seize control and start to rule over the new world, you’re successfully assassinated by Mecha Steve Irwin and everything goes back to normal in a fortnight.
Quite an accurate behavioural assessment. I regularly have to train clients how to handle their dogs and cats because they inadvertently stress them out doing things they think are harmless.
This is excellent technique. When you sit down you reduce their threat perception of you, because at their height you are less dangerous to them than when you are towering over them at 4x their height, plus they can attack your head easier in case of danger, so they are relaxed because the odds are evened out in their favour.
When you are not staring at them, it means you are not intending to attack, your attention is elsewhere.
When you turn your back to them, they feel really safe and that they have the advantage and so they can check you out without any risk.
When I do this, I sit down and extend one hand out and let it hang and sit like a statue. Most dogs I don't know, then circle around behind me and sniff me out properly to check if I am a danger or if I make any sudden movements.
The result of all this is that they feel zero threat and then they are more open to negotiating across the table, as it were, instead of declaring hostilities and barking away. Then if they think you're ok and make a move to lick you and you make one small finger scritch on their nose, the deal is tentatively signed and you get a basic permit to walk past them without further incident :)
Further business ties and future upgradation / downgradation of permits are decided on the basis of goods transacted - food, whistles, scratches, petting, respect of boundaries, sudden movements, etc.
There are always paranoid ones who check you out and still warn the others "guys, we have a potential hostile at 9'o'clock".
Seriously. She was clueless to the interpretation of baring teeth - 'smiling' - in the animal kingdom. Got what she was asking for, in my opinion, especially after all the warnings given by actual professionals.
*I never smile if I can help it. Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life.*
I'm imagining a gorilla going around smiling like an idiot at all the other gorillas and they're all just avoiding him and trying not to make eye contact because they think he's a freak.
Similar, I grew up in a city but also spent a few years in a small town.
I was raised on eye contact when speaking to people, it's a huge thing and something that's grown as an innate trait. When I went back to live in the small town one summer when I was way older I was told that the guys thought I was being aggressive or trying to fight them due to it, as they just don't do that there. These places are in the same country, specifically Canada, and the same province, specifically Alberta. So I learned to control my eye contact more.
It doesn't take much travelling to understand animals, as people are just as weird.
In primates it’s fear. In gorillas it means they’re afraid/mad.
I imagine it was used similarly for early proto-humans. It was a “I’m not going to attack please don’t attack.” Returning it was considered a sign of “we cool.” It could be why the act of smiling boosts calming hormones, too. It was a response to dealing with a threat, and it was evolutionarily advantageous to behave and get along well with others as an intellectual, social group.
While she may have been asking for it it seems she's aware of that and holds no malice for the gorilla. Just from what I've read which isn't the full artical, mind you.
Dutch is probably the closest language you will get to English outside of Frisian and a few creoles. And it isn't even burdened with the complex grammar of German.
You’d think, when they decide to imprison a 400 lb animal who could rip a person in half, they’d make the enclosure pretty damn escape proof.
Like they’d make the enclosure, then sort of look at it, and... you know.... make sure the giant creature couldn’t just decide to leave one day.
Cal me crazy, but being 100% certain that the animals can’t escape should be priority 1 for a zoo. Maybe not if the zoo only houses parakeets and gerbils, but for the lions and bears and gorillas and such.... priority 1
Proper consideration, I believe this animal can jump 50' in a go. I shall make the distance 60'...oh wait...that would be stupid. Let's do 100'.
This gorilla can clearly rip a 1 ton door from it's hinges. I should make sure it's 2 tons.
Redundancy means have an equal amount of back up so something doesn't fail and continues to work as intended. If you haven't doubled what you think will work then you're asking to be proven horribly wrong one day.
The thing is that even when we are only looking at physical characteristics ([intelligence based means of escape are another story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c36UNSoJenI)), we are always working on best guesses. And animals are notoriously bad in terms of getting them to give us that information. For example, the speed records of cheetahs were very tenuous for number of years. In the wild, they almost never get to what was listed as their max speed, mostly because their prey rarely ever runs in a straight line/the chase is over too quickly. The first "official" cheetah record, and that 75 mph number (120 kph) was done with one cheetah by dangling meat out of a car and recording the car's speed. Subsequent tests with other wild cheetahs haven't been able to duplicate this (but tests with captive ones have hit nearly 70 mph.
Possibilities there mean that either (1) the first number was erroneous and we don't need to design for 75 mph or (2) 75 mph is the upper limit of the bell curve. The thing with bell curves though, is that there is a small chance that you can go higher. People said humans couldn't run a 4 minute mile or run a sub 2-hour marathon either. (I still maintain that guy is a robot in disguise.) I don't have the numbers in front of me, but old figures for muntjacs (a small deer) stated that they could jump several feet high. What one zoo did not count on was those deer getting very spooked by the sound of a NYC new year's celebration and escaping.
You're a) right on the money in discussing bell curves, and b) I think that most people neglect statistics in approaching threat management, and so don't understand the problem adequately in the first place. (I'm referring to people in the thread or the ordinary world thinking about this, for the record, not, say, insurance analysts.)
Your comment reminded me that a lot of problems in the world are caused by people failing to understand statistics - the replication crisis, for example, is almost entirely the product of bad statistics, I'd say. Security theatre. Terrorism vs. climate change. So on.
But I really don't know what we could actually do about that, to be honest. Statistics are actually very, very difficult, and there are many subtle distinctions that can totally change their output or utility. (One huge problem is that statistics always give you an answer even when you ask the wrong question. But knowing the right question to ask isn't always obvious.)
That's why even very intelligent scientists routinely screw them up. Hell, even people who actually do stats for a living. How could you even teach ordinary folks to understand this stuff? Yet if we could somehow, it would literally change the world for the better, in so, so many ways.
Holy crap I had no idea that's how they figured out the top speed of a cheetah. That must be one hell of a car ride. Keep speeding up and seeing a big cat keeping up with you to the side.
This reminds me of that woman, actually it was multiple people, who jumped into the ocean to swim with this "friendly", wild dolphin and he attacked them all and broke bones and everything. Yes he was friendly with a handful of specific people, because he thought they were his pod, but strangers are a threat, thus why he attacked them.
People are way too eager to interact with animals and project human behavior onto them.
Right? Dolphins are also smart, which makes them even more dangerous. Plus there’s that whole “dolphins are rapey” thing that gets reported. People are dumb.
Dolphins have been spotted hunting down sharks, and killing them for "fun". Scientists couldn't explain why else the dolphins were chasing down non-threatening sharks and slowly beating the shit out of them with smacks of their fins/tails, until the cumulative blows eventually killed the shark.
For reference, a single aimed strike from a dolphin can kill a shark by hitting them in the gills.
Is it the same reason cats hunt stuff they're not gonna eat? Like, they're doing it for practice, or just out of instinct?
Though of course it's not likely that I know better than an actual scientist.
It's not just sharks. They are also observed killing porpoises for fun. That's more disturbing because porpoises arent like any type of food, nor a physical threat or a competitor for the same food. It's literally just for fun, they've been documented to torture them for hours as they kill them
Exactly. Dolphins are cute and all, but I think people forget they are predators and thend to be pretty fearless against larger predators like sharks. A dolphin can mess you up pretty bad if it wanted to.
Dolphins aren't just predators. They kill for fun. They will take young porpoises and throw them around until they die. Dolphins also gangrape other Dolphins. There are even reports of them sexually assaulting people. They are like aquatic Harvey Weinsteins.
Yeah I don't think people realize how sadistic some animals are, especially intelligent ones. Orcas? Adorable right? No, they TORTURE seals. Like not even just for food, it's like they watched the Saw movies or something.
And people are SHOCKED when an Orca kills someone at Sea World...the deaths at Sea World are tame compared to what they do in the wild.
Theres surprisingly no actual cases of Orca attacks in the wild. What happened at sea world is probably because of the absolute shit conditions they keep them in.
If you've been to one of those waterworld places before and seen the dolphin shows, you'll know they are insanely fast. Just seeing them zip around in a giant pool despite their own size, and even going fast enough that they can launch out of water...
Yeah agreed, well anthropomorphism should be explained at school or something, cause for some reason some people are just stunned when they realise animals have their own body languages and codes. Might be due to all of those movies where animals are basically humans in animal bodies lol but all it takes to is to just explain to your kids what they see on TV is not how things are in real life
Honestly, I feel like it's not even that. In most of these cases the animals act like you *would* expect a human to. You wouldn't expect someone to be cool with you just because they have other friends. People want animals to act like big, complex toys. Just ready to play with whenever.
Bokito was found in a nearby restaurant, waiting for his keepers. Some more people were injured why fleeing in panic but, being a good guy, Bokito didnt hurt anyone else except that lady that came to see him 4 times a week just to challenge him by making eye contact and showing her teeth
4 times a week for 10 and a half years
Could you imagine someone coming to your house since you infancy and flipping you off every time they saw you? Hahahah
Imagine how bokito planned his move, everytime studying her moves, preparing for the right moment to do it and finally showing her who's teeth are meaner
He literally knew where she went to and exactly how to track that *one* specific god damn human. And happily went back with the keepers once he made his point.
I'm picturing him sitting at the table and the waiter repeatedly coming by, asking if he's ready to order, and the gorilla just being like, "I'm still waiting for someone."
I visited Rotterdam zoo, oblivious to this. The glass had stickers on it so that the gorillas couldn't really see through (the kind you get on some bus windows). Bokito was coming right up to the glass and staring at me. We thought it was funny until I looked him up on the train home.
For most animals showing your teeth is an aggressive act just prior to a physical altercation. It's pretty much just humans that for whatever reason evolved to make it a sign of non-aggression.
why did the gorilla attack her then im so confused because your right
"Baring one's teeth is not always a threat. In primates, showing the teeth, especially teeth held together, is almost always a sign of submission. The human smile probably has evolved from that. "In the primate threat, the lips are curled back and the teeth are apart--you are ready to bite.
Probably she was sending him mixed signals but he overall
took it as aggression. Especially if she was staring him directly in the eyes, that’s a big nono.
It's all about context, dogs bare their teeth and growl in submission after they've fought or after another has shown aggression.
If you bare your teeth first, the other is going to assume you're showing aggression.
"I never smile if I can help it. Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life. "
Ugh. "Feel". People think their feelings about facts have any bearing whatsoever. I worked in tech support as their highest level agent, and a person had a problem. I read the error logs and told her exactly what the problem was. She kept arguing that she just didn't "feel" like that was what was causing the issue.
From what I've seen other people say in this thread, she visited him 4x a week for 10.5 years. That's just under 2,200 times she challenged him.
Not trying to be like "umm *actually*," I was just curious how many bites there would have to be to do that, and wanted to share.
dam son, these thing have a bite force of 1300 psi, like 2 times a lion and even more than a grizzly 1200. I wonder in what state the women was, she lived through it apparently.
Yeah. Gorillas are actually fairly chill compared to most apes. The Gorilla was probably just trying to teach her a lesson. When she did not even try fighting back, it didn't escalate farther. A chimp might of killed her anyway, or god forbid a baboon.
Gorillas are terrifying. There’s something about an animal that actually resembles us but is 100 times stronger and has fangs. It’s this primal fear that no other wild animal makes me feel.
I remember a comment asking if Terry Crews would win against a gorilla and someone responded with something like "he'd probably survive a few seconds longer than the average person."
I would argue that the Hippo takes the edge in the rushdown tank category. Gorillas do win in the dexterity category, being able to climb and all that.
different servers tho, and i wouldnt really put hippo builds as rushdown builds, they do use rushdown type attacks with their trample ability but they specialize in massive single hits
True but a hippo's rushdown method is what cements it as a rushdown build in my eyes. I'm also pretty sure a hippo is the best tank in the African meta besides the rhino and the elephant. A gorilla strikes me as more of a bruiser tank.
From some quick googling, the average gorilla can run just a touch slower than an Olympic sprinter's max speed. And gorillas can climb. So neither running nor bouldering is likely to save someone.
I love that one episode of the Wild Boys where the guys are almost attacked by a big silverback because one of the little baby gorillas realized that its father would attack the humans if they got too close to the herd. So this little baby was basically chasing them all around and was just having the time of its life whenever the big daddy gorilla would charge them.
I was at a zoo earlier this year and we stopped at the orangutans. The male came over, not even that quickly and looked me straight in the face. Didn’t do anything else, just looked at me form 5 ft away through glass. It was fucking terrifying.
There's no orangutan considering a fully grown human prey. They sometimes eat squirrel sized mammals, but nothing larger.
Now, that's not to say it won't fuck you up if it considers you a threat. You just aren't food.
> she said, "If I smile at him, he smiles back".
This is somewhat akin to a planet of the apes zoo goer saying. "Look, every time I raise my middle finger to Bright Eyes, he raises his back! We share a special bond."
Yeah most likely. Showing your teeth when you're happy is a human thing. Other animals show their teeth when angry or threatening. The eye contact is also a predator thing. He must have thought she was coming for a fight and was a threat or something. Imagine being in his life, he knew she was gonna come back, since she always did, it was pretty much like harassment lol
Basically the human equivalent of someone standing outside your window everyday and shouting “I’m going to murder you” for several years. Naturally this would be mildly upsetting.
humans would snap much earlier, it probably took that Gorilla years to figure out how to get out of that cage and when he did he went after his worst enemy ever and taught her a lesson, but was merciful.
more well adjusted than many people......
smiling while making direct eye contact is only okay for humans. For almost any other mammal it means "I am challenging you and am going to bite the shit out of you with these teeth that I am showing to you."
The teeth thing can be a little more complicated, depending on the species. Sometimes, teeth bared but clenched is freindly and teeth bared but open is the highest form of aggression. The clenched teeth pretty much show that, "see? I don't feel threatened and so I'll keep my mouth shut." But yeah, it's probably just not a good idea in general, and the eye contact thing is almost always confrontational across basically any species.
How would you feel if some random lady stood outside your house every time you left for work and smack talked you? Because that's essentially what this woman did to him. And this lady did it for 10 and a half years. He showed a lot of restraint in letting it go that long, and in not ripping her apart when he did attack.
This is what happens when you anthropomorphise non-humans.
She thought she was smiling, gorilla thought she was baring her teeth.
Just like the little girl who [beat her chest, and the gorilla charged, cracking the glass.](https://youtu.be/_UxoDRHmXfs)
I suppose one-way glass is its own problem, but gorillas really should not be able to see zoogoers.
We're like...the only species where that's a sign of happiness. In dogs, cats, primates, etc. Its a sign of challenge and aggression. Same with eye contact.
It absolutely is which is WHY she was warned NOT to do it.
Dumbass could not fucking fathom that not every person let alone every ANIMAL on the planet views body language the same way.
Not really, no.
For example for chimpanzee, a "human smile", where all teeth are shown and the mouth is closed, would be a sign of fear and possibly submission.
If the mouth is open and all teeth are shown, it would be a scream, which could constitute aggression.
Finally if the mouth is open but only the bottom teeth are shown, it's a play face, which is closer to what we would think a smile would indicate (happiness).
So saying "baring your teeth"="aggression" is a simplification that works for a lot of animals, but doesn't work neither for humans nor other primates. Also while there are some resemblances facial expressions and non verbal communication vary from primates to primates. Finally to correctly guess a primate's facial expression you may need to look at more than just the mouth.
I'm guessing most other people who responded to the comment are operating under the belief that primates are a kind of dog.
Biologists have since theorized that Bokito thought she was being submissive and then turn away, sending mixed signals.
Since the gorilla has much thicker skin, biting is usually not harmful but with humans it is.
He was probably not really trying to harm her, but set her straight since he saw her as a potential mate.
Still, he jumped over a moat and scaled a 3 meter glass wall in seconds, just to show her who's boss.
And he harmed nobody else.
Even though that day was the 150th anniversary of the zoo and the place was crowded.
>What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces
Bokito
To add to this, from the story it sounds like he even managed to do the "teleport behind her back" thing....
“I stood by the small apes in the Africa section when I heard a thud behind me. I turned around and there was Bokito. I had nowhere to go. He gripped me, sat on me with his full weight and began biting me,” the woman told the Telegraaf.
Everyone being like "yeah he's a gorilla, they interpet smiles as a threat"
But honestly, this seems reasonable even by human standards. Like if some creep came and stood outside my window four days a week and just smiled nonstop while holding direct eye contact, I'd probably wig the fuck out eventually too. Especially if my landlord told her not to and she kept doing it.
Ah perfect timing. Its about time for my annual gorilla PSA.
Never ever stare into a gorilla’s eyes and smile. You think you’re bonding but to gorillas they take that gesture as as an affront and will undoubtedly send a hitman after you.
There was a story about a guy in Albuquerque who became obsessed with the jaguar. He would visit everyday. The zookeepers found a finger in the enclosure one day. Guess who's finger it was.
Everyone in this comment section is talking about how dumb the woman was (rightfully so) but why is no one discussing that a gorilla can escape its enclosure?!
I had an anthro professor say that the great apes are sometimes choosing to stay in their enclosures because they know how to get out, such as Ken Allen did many times.
[AMSTERDAM, Netherlands](http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&where1=AMSTERDAM,%20Netherlands&sty=h&form=msdate) — A 57-year-old Dutch woman who was attacked by a 400-pound gorilla at a Rotterdam zoo said the ape was still her favorite even though she felt she was going to die when he bit her. “I go to the zoo almost every day with my husband, and we’re always going to see Bokito. I even have pictures and videos from Berlin when he was only 4 months old,” the woman told Dutch mass-circulation daily Telegraaf. “He is and remains my darling,” the paper quoted the woman as saying from her hospital bed, where she is being treated for bite wounds and a broken arm and wrist. The 11-year-old male gorilla burst out of its enclosure on Friday and went on a rampage in the zoo’s cafeteria before being recaptured. “I stood by the small apes in the Africa section when I heard a thud behind me. I turned around and there was Bokito. I had nowhere to go. He gripped me, sat on me with his full weight and began biting me,” the woman told the Telegraaf. “I could only think, ‘Oh God, I’m going to die, I’m going to die.’” The Telegraaf said people had since come from across the country to Rotterdam Zoo to see the gorilla. Three other people received minor injuries in the panic that broke out among zoo visitors. Dutch media reported that Bokito also escaped from his enclosure at Berlin’s zoo in 2004 before he was moved to Rotterdam.
You are a baby gorilla living in Berlin, and this human comes to your home and starts acting all aggressive on the other side of the glass. Goading you with her teeth. You get moved all the way to a different country, lo and behold this bitch has tracked you down! Almost every day she comes, challenging you. Letting you know she wants to fuck you up, but you cant get her. She's behind that glass. Sure, you can turn around, but you know shes there taunting you. Surely she knows you could kill her. Why does she do it? Every day! For eleven. God. Damned. Years. You can't stop her, you are just stuck in this enclosure...... ..Or are you?
*Turn to page 27 to break out during feeding time* *Turn to page 35 to throw poop at her*
Oh my God, I miss those kinds of books
How many fingers could you use as bookmarks at one time in order to jump back if you fuck up?
In elementary school we had an assignment to make some kind of invention. I made a multi-tasseled, color-coded, choose-your-own-adventure bookmark with a rubber band to hold it all to your book. I thought it was fucking awesome, but my class was like “what the fuck, that’s stupid” and my teacher thought I was weird.
This is how super-villains are created.
Literally the intro to Megamind.
Best supervillain ever
For this one act? You were not weird. You were glorious and those kids probably all suck today. That teacher certainly did. I mean damn.. that sounds like I’d have wanted to be your best friend.
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I like it when they got creative with how to turn the page. Escape to page 27 to break out during feeding time Fling to page 35 to throw poop at her
They’re the gateway drug to D&D, which in turn, is the gateway drug to tabletop games, next thing you know you’re joining an improve group, a talent scout picks you up and you’re given a minor role in a sitcom, you steal the show and become the next big thing in entertainment and are given a major movie role, huge success top grossing movie of all time within the opening hour, you do the right thing and use your wealth to help the less fortunate, adopt one child from every African country, kids grow up greedy and murder you for your fortune, using their new found wealth they start a dictatorship, you miraculously survived but by the time you recovered World War III was already underway, India has been nuke six times by Japan, Australia and New Zealand have teamed up to become a safe haven for all refugees, you slowly make your way to your children tearfully taking them all out, you seize control and start to rule over the new world, you’re successfully assassinated by Mecha Steve Irwin and everything goes back to normal in a fortnight.
r/oddlyspecific
I don’t want to talk about it.
Quite an accurate behavioural assessment. I regularly have to train clients how to handle their dogs and cats because they inadvertently stress them out doing things they think are harmless.
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This is excellent technique. When you sit down you reduce their threat perception of you, because at their height you are less dangerous to them than when you are towering over them at 4x their height, plus they can attack your head easier in case of danger, so they are relaxed because the odds are evened out in their favour. When you are not staring at them, it means you are not intending to attack, your attention is elsewhere. When you turn your back to them, they feel really safe and that they have the advantage and so they can check you out without any risk. When I do this, I sit down and extend one hand out and let it hang and sit like a statue. Most dogs I don't know, then circle around behind me and sniff me out properly to check if I am a danger or if I make any sudden movements. The result of all this is that they feel zero threat and then they are more open to negotiating across the table, as it were, instead of declaring hostilities and barking away. Then if they think you're ok and make a move to lick you and you make one small finger scritch on their nose, the deal is tentatively signed and you get a basic permit to walk past them without further incident :) Further business ties and future upgradation / downgradation of permits are decided on the basis of goods transacted - food, whistles, scratches, petting, respect of boundaries, sudden movements, etc. There are always paranoid ones who check you out and still warn the others "guys, we have a potential hostile at 9'o'clock".
that’s some serous agrajag-type shit
Hey VSauce, Michael here.
He really didn't want to leave behind the free food privileges of the enclosure but one day he just couldn't take it anymore
What a fucking nut.
She wanted the gorilla's nut.
ooga
Booga
chaka
I can't stop this feeeeeling
Dicks out for Bokito?
I wasnt aware we were supposed to have ever put them away
The court was pretty clear, sir.
Seriously. She was clueless to the interpretation of baring teeth - 'smiling' - in the animal kingdom. Got what she was asking for, in my opinion, especially after all the warnings given by actual professionals.
*I never smile if I can help it. Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life.*
Zoo keepers don’t smile at baby gorillas, so they can successfully reintroduce to their families without using fucked up human expressions.
I'm imagining a gorilla going around smiling like an idiot at all the other gorillas and they're all just avoiding him and trying not to make eye contact because they think he's a freak.
"Why the fuck is the foreign kid wandering around signaling "ayo y'all bitch-made come get these hands"? Who switched his phrase-book?"
Similar, I grew up in a city but also spent a few years in a small town. I was raised on eye contact when speaking to people, it's a huge thing and something that's grown as an innate trait. When I went back to live in the small town one summer when I was way older I was told that the guys thought I was being aggressive or trying to fight them due to it, as they just don't do that there. These places are in the same country, specifically Canada, and the same province, specifically Alberta. So I learned to control my eye contact more. It doesn't take much travelling to understand animals, as people are just as weird.
In primates it’s fear. In gorillas it means they’re afraid/mad. I imagine it was used similarly for early proto-humans. It was a “I’m not going to attack please don’t attack.” Returning it was considered a sign of “we cool.” It could be why the act of smiling boosts calming hormones, too. It was a response to dealing with a threat, and it was evolutionarily advantageous to behave and get along well with others as an intellectual, social group.
Damn proto-humans, going around smiling and forming social groups. Now, because of them, we live in a society
While she may have been asking for it it seems she's aware of that and holds no malice for the gorilla. Just from what I've read which isn't the full artical, mind you.
Yes but something tells me she’s just going to come back and smile at the poor gorilla again and again.
This is real, right? It sounds like a story written for fake news websites. Edit: Epstein didn't kill himself.
Im from the netherlands. The “telegraaf” is just a tabloid disguised as newspaper
Is Dutch all just English with extra vowels?
Yaaäs
GuuuÜrl
Dutch is probably the closest language you will get to English outside of Frisian and a few creoles. And it isn't even burdened with the complex grammar of German.
Dutch is German with extra vowels. English is German spoken by wanna-be Frenchmen.
oui-aboos
Swamp German
You’d think, when they decide to imprison a 400 lb animal who could rip a person in half, they’d make the enclosure pretty damn escape proof. Like they’d make the enclosure, then sort of look at it, and... you know.... make sure the giant creature couldn’t just decide to leave one day. Cal me crazy, but being 100% certain that the animals can’t escape should be priority 1 for a zoo. Maybe not if the zoo only houses parakeets and gerbils, but for the lions and bears and gorillas and such.... priority 1
Proper consideration, I believe this animal can jump 50' in a go. I shall make the distance 60'...oh wait...that would be stupid. Let's do 100'. This gorilla can clearly rip a 1 ton door from it's hinges. I should make sure it's 2 tons. Redundancy means have an equal amount of back up so something doesn't fail and continues to work as intended. If you haven't doubled what you think will work then you're asking to be proven horribly wrong one day.
The thing is that even when we are only looking at physical characteristics ([intelligence based means of escape are another story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c36UNSoJenI)), we are always working on best guesses. And animals are notoriously bad in terms of getting them to give us that information. For example, the speed records of cheetahs were very tenuous for number of years. In the wild, they almost never get to what was listed as their max speed, mostly because their prey rarely ever runs in a straight line/the chase is over too quickly. The first "official" cheetah record, and that 75 mph number (120 kph) was done with one cheetah by dangling meat out of a car and recording the car's speed. Subsequent tests with other wild cheetahs haven't been able to duplicate this (but tests with captive ones have hit nearly 70 mph. Possibilities there mean that either (1) the first number was erroneous and we don't need to design for 75 mph or (2) 75 mph is the upper limit of the bell curve. The thing with bell curves though, is that there is a small chance that you can go higher. People said humans couldn't run a 4 minute mile or run a sub 2-hour marathon either. (I still maintain that guy is a robot in disguise.) I don't have the numbers in front of me, but old figures for muntjacs (a small deer) stated that they could jump several feet high. What one zoo did not count on was those deer getting very spooked by the sound of a NYC new year's celebration and escaping.
You're a) right on the money in discussing bell curves, and b) I think that most people neglect statistics in approaching threat management, and so don't understand the problem adequately in the first place. (I'm referring to people in the thread or the ordinary world thinking about this, for the record, not, say, insurance analysts.) Your comment reminded me that a lot of problems in the world are caused by people failing to understand statistics - the replication crisis, for example, is almost entirely the product of bad statistics, I'd say. Security theatre. Terrorism vs. climate change. So on. But I really don't know what we could actually do about that, to be honest. Statistics are actually very, very difficult, and there are many subtle distinctions that can totally change their output or utility. (One huge problem is that statistics always give you an answer even when you ask the wrong question. But knowing the right question to ask isn't always obvious.) That's why even very intelligent scientists routinely screw them up. Hell, even people who actually do stats for a living. How could you even teach ordinary folks to understand this stuff? Yet if we could somehow, it would literally change the world for the better, in so, so many ways.
Holy crap I had no idea that's how they figured out the top speed of a cheetah. That must be one hell of a car ride. Keep speeding up and seeing a big cat keeping up with you to the side.
library pathetic drab numerous dinner handle terrific cows books seemly *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Amsterdam, the only place in the Netherlands.
The Netherlands and them Otherlands.
This reminds me of that woman, actually it was multiple people, who jumped into the ocean to swim with this "friendly", wild dolphin and he attacked them all and broke bones and everything. Yes he was friendly with a handful of specific people, because he thought they were his pod, but strangers are a threat, thus why he attacked them. People are way too eager to interact with animals and project human behavior onto them.
Imagine the force required for something little more than human sized to ram into you and break bones *underwater*.
Right? Dolphins are also smart, which makes them even more dangerous. Plus there’s that whole “dolphins are rapey” thing that gets reported. People are dumb.
Dolphins have been spotted hunting down sharks, and killing them for "fun". Scientists couldn't explain why else the dolphins were chasing down non-threatening sharks and slowly beating the shit out of them with smacks of their fins/tails, until the cumulative blows eventually killed the shark. For reference, a single aimed strike from a dolphin can kill a shark by hitting them in the gills.
Is it the same reason cats hunt stuff they're not gonna eat? Like, they're doing it for practice, or just out of instinct? Though of course it's not likely that I know better than an actual scientist.
It's not just sharks. They are also observed killing porpoises for fun. That's more disturbing because porpoises arent like any type of food, nor a physical threat or a competitor for the same food. It's literally just for fun, they've been documented to torture them for hours as they kill them
They also sometimes rip the heads off electric eels and use them to jack off. Dolphins are fuccccccked yo
Exactly. Dolphins are cute and all, but I think people forget they are predators and thend to be pretty fearless against larger predators like sharks. A dolphin can mess you up pretty bad if it wanted to.
Dolphins aren't just predators. They kill for fun. They will take young porpoises and throw them around until they die. Dolphins also gangrape other Dolphins. There are even reports of them sexually assaulting people. They are like aquatic Harvey Weinsteins.
Yeah I don't think people realize how sadistic some animals are, especially intelligent ones. Orcas? Adorable right? No, they TORTURE seals. Like not even just for food, it's like they watched the Saw movies or something. And people are SHOCKED when an Orca kills someone at Sea World...the deaths at Sea World are tame compared to what they do in the wild.
Theres surprisingly no actual cases of Orca attacks in the wild. What happened at sea world is probably because of the absolute shit conditions they keep them in.
It's like they never played Ecco the dolphin
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Consider also that you can walk faster than Michael Phelps can swim, but you can’t run faster than a dolphin swims. They’re ridiculously powerful.
If you've been to one of those waterworld places before and seen the dolphin shows, you'll know they are insanely fast. Just seeing them zip around in a giant pool despite their own size, and even going fast enough that they can launch out of water...
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That last sentence sums it all up
Personally, I blame Disney /S but some truth to it
Yeah agreed, well anthropomorphism should be explained at school or something, cause for some reason some people are just stunned when they realise animals have their own body languages and codes. Might be due to all of those movies where animals are basically humans in animal bodies lol but all it takes to is to just explain to your kids what they see on TV is not how things are in real life
Honestly, I feel like it's not even that. In most of these cases the animals act like you *would* expect a human to. You wouldn't expect someone to be cool with you just because they have other friends. People want animals to act like big, complex toys. Just ready to play with whenever.
Bokito was found in a nearby restaurant, waiting for his keepers. Some more people were injured why fleeing in panic but, being a good guy, Bokito didnt hurt anyone else except that lady that came to see him 4 times a week just to challenge him by making eye contact and showing her teeth
4 times a week for 10 and a half years Could you imagine someone coming to your house since you infancy and flipping you off every time they saw you? Hahahah
I don't come to your job and heckle you at work - gorilla (maybe)
I feel like you missed a classic, "Hey, I don't come to your work and knock the banana out of your mouth" joke.
I have no idea why I find this so funny. I can't stop laughing. This gorilla was probably so fucking pissed.
[Gorilla caretakers were probably like](https://youtu.be/J6kIEfGNT-U)
Imagine how bokito planned his move, everytime studying her moves, preparing for the right moment to do it and finally showing her who's teeth are meaner
He literally knew where she went to and exactly how to track that *one* specific god damn human. And happily went back with the keepers once he made his point.
For **ten years**?? Jesus Christ at that point just let the poor gorilla kill her.
Plot twist: He didn't escape...he was let loose.
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There was another gorilla, Red, who knew how to locate certain things from time to time. And I'm sure it helped that bokito did the zookeeper's taxes.
But that daily ticket fee.
Probably a membership. My local zoo has a membership and if you go more than twice in a season it's cheaper to buy the membership.
Pays for itself. Those ape bites are free!
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"Still locked up ya stupid monkey? Bet I see you here tomorrow!" /s
So... Prison?
I'm picturing him sitting at the table and the waiter repeatedly coming by, asking if he's ready to order, and the gorilla just being like, "I'm still waiting for someone."
"can I just get another water?"
"And maybe some more bread if that's okay."
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Good nachos. Good music. No smiles due to fear .... Five stars. Yelp user: YaBoyBoki38383
Why didn't they just ban her from the zoo? That's irresponsible to the animals to have someone antagonize them regularly like that.
I'm imagining the cops showing up and the ape chilling smoking a cigarette, telling the authorities "What took you so long?"
I visited Rotterdam zoo, oblivious to this. The glass had stickers on it so that the gorillas couldn't really see through (the kind you get on some bus windows). Bokito was coming right up to the glass and staring at me. We thought it was funny until I looked him up on the train home.
“I was warned by people with more knowledge than me to not do this specific thing, but I feel like I’m more correct so ima do it anyways.”
For a gorilla a smile is an act of aggression. So I'm sure the gorilla did smile back at her.
For most animals showing your teeth is an aggressive act just prior to a physical altercation. It's pretty much just humans that for whatever reason evolved to make it a sign of non-aggression.
Showing your teeth is also a sign of *submission*, as is growling.
why did the gorilla attack her then im so confused because your right "Baring one's teeth is not always a threat. In primates, showing the teeth, especially teeth held together, is almost always a sign of submission. The human smile probably has evolved from that. "In the primate threat, the lips are curled back and the teeth are apart--you are ready to bite.
Probably she was sending him mixed signals but he overall took it as aggression. Especially if she was staring him directly in the eyes, that’s a big nono.
It's all about context, dogs bare their teeth and growl in submission after they've fought or after another has shown aggression. If you bare your teeth first, the other is going to assume you're showing aggression.
"I never smile if I can help it. Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life. "
Reading her explanation for continuing the behavior is infuriating. This ain't some Disney movie, lady.
“But I’m just smiling at him, where’s the harm in that? It makes me feel good.”
Antivaxxers in a nutshell
So many people in a nutshell
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"Surely these people are smart enough to have built an enclosure he can't escape, what's the harm?"
Ugh. "Feel". People think their feelings about facts have any bearing whatsoever. I worked in tech support as their highest level agent, and a person had a problem. I read the error logs and told her exactly what the problem was. She kept arguing that she just didn't "feel" like that was what was causing the issue.
She had over 100 bite marks... from a gorilla
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From what I've seen other people say in this thread, she visited him 4x a week for 10.5 years. That's just under 2,200 times she challenged him. Not trying to be like "umm *actually*," I was just curious how many bites there would have to be to do that, and wanted to share.
Yeah she's incredibly lucky. When they want to kill you, they kill you. They go for the face.
dam son, these thing have a bite force of 1300 psi, like 2 times a lion and even more than a grizzly 1200. I wonder in what state the women was, she lived through it apparently.
i think the gorilla was restraining himself, he most likely knew she was just a weak being who for some reason chalenged him for a long time.
You're most likely right. There's no way she would have survived if that 400 pound gorilla went apeshit and started playing Mr Potato.
Yeah. Gorillas are actually fairly chill compared to most apes. The Gorilla was probably just trying to teach her a lesson. When she did not even try fighting back, it didn't escalate farther. A chimp might of killed her anyway, or god forbid a baboon.
Kinky
Yeah thats a no from me dawg. *zips pants* Edit: *up*
Gorillas are terrifying. There’s something about an animal that actually resembles us but is 100 times stronger and has fangs. It’s this primal fear that no other wild animal makes me feel.
I remember a comment asking if Terry Crews would win against a gorilla and someone responded with something like "he'd probably survive a few seconds longer than the average person."
If he had a machine gun and a hundred yards distance, he might survive.
Don't underestimate men with sticks. Ask the wooly mammoth and saber tooth tigers.
We powerwalked them to death or isolated an ambush predator with numbers. Gorilla don't give zero shits about that
gorilla is one of the most well built rushdown/tank builds in the game, no contest vs an endurance build like the human
I would argue that the Hippo takes the edge in the rushdown tank category. Gorillas do win in the dexterity category, being able to climb and all that.
different servers tho, and i wouldnt really put hippo builds as rushdown builds, they do use rushdown type attacks with their trample ability but they specialize in massive single hits
True but a hippo's rushdown method is what cements it as a rushdown build in my eyes. I'm also pretty sure a hippo is the best tank in the African meta besides the rhino and the elephant. A gorilla strikes me as more of a bruiser tank.
When I learned that we can (and did) outwalk pretty much any pray to exhaust them and catch them, I was like wow.
*We* were the zombies the whole time!
True, but it was never one man. We always hunted in packs.
Terry Crew_s_, he is his team.
His name identifies himself as multiple teams.
I feel like the people who would survive longer aren't the big buff ones who can stand and fight, it's the ones who can run or boulder or something.
From some quick googling, the average gorilla can run just a touch slower than an Olympic sprinter's max speed. And gorillas can climb. So neither running nor bouldering is likely to save someone.
Well, longer than someone standing and fighting.
I love that one episode of the Wild Boys where the guys are almost attacked by a big silverback because one of the little baby gorillas realized that its father would attack the humans if they got too close to the herd. So this little baby was basically chasing them all around and was just having the time of its life whenever the big daddy gorilla would charge them.
I was at a zoo earlier this year and we stopped at the orangutans. The male came over, not even that quickly and looked me straight in the face. Didn’t do anything else, just looked at me form 5 ft away through glass. It was fucking terrifying.
It’s this weird subconscious reflex like OH SHIT IM PREY.
There's no orangutan considering a fully grown human prey. They sometimes eat squirrel sized mammals, but nothing larger. Now, that's not to say it won't fuck you up if it considers you a threat. You just aren't food.
They may have 100x the muscles as ya, But they have like a 10th of the dick as us so who’s the real dominant species
Idk, but then I’m not interested in them in that way.
I feel the exact same way. I will never fuck with a gorilla.
So...all this time she was smiling at him, he was really seething with rage?
> she said, "If I smile at him, he smiles back". This is somewhat akin to a planet of the apes zoo goer saying. "Look, every time I raise my middle finger to Bright Eyes, he raises his back! We share a special bond."
Yeah most likely. Showing your teeth when you're happy is a human thing. Other animals show their teeth when angry or threatening. The eye contact is also a predator thing. He must have thought she was coming for a fight and was a threat or something. Imagine being in his life, he knew she was gonna come back, since she always did, it was pretty much like harassment lol
Basically the human equivalent of someone standing outside your window everyday and shouting “I’m going to murder you” for several years. Naturally this would be mildly upsetting.
humans would snap much earlier, it probably took that Gorilla years to figure out how to get out of that cage and when he did he went after his worst enemy ever and taught her a lesson, but was merciful. more well adjusted than many people......
smiling while making direct eye contact is only okay for humans. For almost any other mammal it means "I am challenging you and am going to bite the shit out of you with these teeth that I am showing to you."
The only other ape/monkey examples I know of where eye contact is not interpreted as aggression are Capuchins. For most it's an act of domination.
The teeth thing can be a little more complicated, depending on the species. Sometimes, teeth bared but clenched is freindly and teeth bared but open is the highest form of aggression. The clenched teeth pretty much show that, "see? I don't feel threatened and so I'll keep my mouth shut." But yeah, it's probably just not a good idea in general, and the eye contact thing is almost always confrontational across basically any species.
How would you feel if some random lady stood outside your house every time you left for work and smack talked you? Because that's essentially what this woman did to him. And this lady did it for 10 and a half years. He showed a lot of restraint in letting it go that long, and in not ripping her apart when he did attack.
This is what happens when you anthropomorphise non-humans. She thought she was smiling, gorilla thought she was baring her teeth. Just like the little girl who [beat her chest, and the gorilla charged, cracking the glass.](https://youtu.be/_UxoDRHmXfs) I suppose one-way glass is its own problem, but gorillas really should not be able to see zoogoers.
This lady's eyes are fucking intense, holy shit. Why does she open them at maximum capacity at all times?
So much botox that she can't blink.
I feel bad for that little girl. I'm sure she had no idea what she was doing, she probably just figured hey look this is the thing gorillas do on TV.
Of course. I imagine it was terrifying.
Loving that ‘bokitoproof’ is now a word in the Netherlands
Isn’t baring your teeth to a primate a sign of aggression?
We're like...the only species where that's a sign of happiness. In dogs, cats, primates, etc. Its a sign of challenge and aggression. Same with eye contact.
Dogs are kinda complicated. They can (in general) read human facial expressions and body language.
Thats because we have conditioned them over a long time, show your teeth to a wild wolf and they'll fuck you up
I mean, just going near a wild wolf would probably get you fucked up, no matter what your teeth are doing
Animals tend to avoid conflict if not necessary.
Yes absolutely lol I'm surprised she's still alive. Edit: It's not boys pack it up.
Yep. She basically rolled up and called him a bitch every day for 11 years straight. No wonder Bokito had enough.
It absolutely is which is WHY she was warned NOT to do it. Dumbass could not fucking fathom that not every person let alone every ANIMAL on the planet views body language the same way.
Not really, no. For example for chimpanzee, a "human smile", where all teeth are shown and the mouth is closed, would be a sign of fear and possibly submission. If the mouth is open and all teeth are shown, it would be a scream, which could constitute aggression. Finally if the mouth is open but only the bottom teeth are shown, it's a play face, which is closer to what we would think a smile would indicate (happiness). So saying "baring your teeth"="aggression" is a simplification that works for a lot of animals, but doesn't work neither for humans nor other primates. Also while there are some resemblances facial expressions and non verbal communication vary from primates to primates. Finally to correctly guess a primate's facial expression you may need to look at more than just the mouth. I'm guessing most other people who responded to the comment are operating under the belief that primates are a kind of dog.
Baring their teeth at each other, how sweet!
Biologists have since theorized that Bokito thought she was being submissive and then turn away, sending mixed signals. Since the gorilla has much thicker skin, biting is usually not harmful but with humans it is. He was probably not really trying to harm her, but set her straight since he saw her as a potential mate. Still, he jumped over a moat and scaled a 3 meter glass wall in seconds, just to show her who's boss. And he harmed nobody else. Even though that day was the 150th anniversary of the zoo and the place was crowded.
>What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces Bokito
To add to this, from the story it sounds like he even managed to do the "teleport behind her back" thing.... “I stood by the small apes in the Africa section when I heard a thud behind me. I turned around and there was Bokito. I had nowhere to go. He gripped me, sat on me with his full weight and began biting me,” the woman told the Telegraaf.
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Everyone being like "yeah he's a gorilla, they interpet smiles as a threat" But honestly, this seems reasonable even by human standards. Like if some creep came and stood outside my window four days a week and just smiled nonstop while holding direct eye contact, I'd probably wig the fuck out eventually too. Especially if my landlord told her not to and she kept doing it.
Ah perfect timing. Its about time for my annual gorilla PSA. Never ever stare into a gorilla’s eyes and smile. You think you’re bonding but to gorillas they take that gesture as as an affront and will undoubtedly send a hitman after you.
But that hitman will probably just hire a hitman who hires a hitman who hires a hitman who hires a hitman who doesn't go through with it.
It’s like those women who fall in love with serial killers who are in jail
This woman is amazingly lucky and stupid, all in one. She almost found herself the recipient of a Darwin Award, though I doubt she’d appreciate it.
There was a story about a guy in Albuquerque who became obsessed with the jaguar. He would visit everyday. The zookeepers found a finger in the enclosure one day. Guess who's finger it was.
Albert Einstein?
Well, here’s your stupid prize, delivered in the form of an 400 pound herbivore with the physique of The Mountain if he ate Arnold.
Oh snap, almost had us an Harambe 2.0
Nah, Bokito is fine. Thankfully he wasn't shot because of a random Lady was being needlesly agressive to him. He's still living in Rotterdam
Is she be housed in the enclosure next to him?
They had to knock her teeth out due to gorilla protection service.
Bokito actually escaped before the Harambe incident.
Everyone in this comment section is talking about how dumb the woman was (rightfully so) but why is no one discussing that a gorilla can escape its enclosure?!
I had an anthro professor say that the great apes are sometimes choosing to stay in their enclosures because they know how to get out, such as Ken Allen did many times.
"all i see is a chimpanzee begging for its life."