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Recent spectacle surrounded a young boy, three years old, who climbed into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo only to be grabbed by a 450-pound male gorilla. Working against time, and the gorilla’s temperament — the crowd’s panic spurred the gorilla on — the zoo’s animal felt the only way to keep the young boy safe was to shoot the gorilla.
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BILL NYE:
Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life.
In Seattle Nye began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night. Nye then quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle’s home-grown ensemble comedy show “Almost Live.” This is where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®” was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle’s NBC affiliate.
While working on the Science Guy show, Nye won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing, and producing. The show won 18 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote five children’s books about science, including his latest title, “Bill Nye’s Great Big Book of Tiny Germs.”
Nye is the host of three currently-running television series. “The 100 Greatest Discoveries” airs on the Science Channel. “The Eyes of Nye” airs on PBS stations across the country.
Bill’s latest project is hosting a show on Planet Green called “Stuff Happens.” It’s about environmentally responsible choices that consumers can make as they go about their day and their shopping. Also, you’ll see Nye in his good-natured rivalry with his neighbor Ed Begley. They compete to see who can save the most energy and produce the smallest carbon footprint. Nye has 4,000 watts of solar power and a solar-boosted hot water system. There’s also the low water use garden and underground watering system. It’s fun for him; he’s an engineer with an energy conservation hobby.
Nye is currently the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, the world’s largest space interest organization.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Bill Nye: So recently a four-year-old kid got into a gorilla enclosure in a zoo and the zoo officials decided in the safety of the kid they had to kill the gorilla. So here was an animal that was in his natural habitat in Africa doing his gorillatical thing. And he got captured and ended up in a zoo. And then the guy got shot because some kid crawled into his enclosure. It’s just – there’s no good thing about this. With that said my life was certainly enriched by going to zoos. I learned that even a giraffe could exist was an amazing thing to me. And the smell of the zoo was or is something I’ll never forget. It reminds me of farms, there’s animal excrement that has to be dealt with. And you see how much you have in common with these creatures. Is it ethical? I think we all agree it would be better no if we didn’t have zoos. If we had a way to interact with animals without causing them such hardship. Now the example from my personal experience which really affects me and affects my judgment on this. There was a guy named Ivan who was a gorilla brought to the United States in the 1960s. My recollection is 1962.
And he lived with a family in Tacoma, Washington. And they hung out. The gorilla was at the dinner table and they did gorilla-human interaction things, played games, did stuff. But the guy eventually got to be the 400 pound gorilla in the room and they had to put him in an enclosure in a cage that was concrete. And you could visit him in the B&I Department Store in Tacoma, Washington. And this is in the Pacific Northwest and this guy was a character, a feature, a tourist attraction. And I don’t know – I’m not a primate expert but I looked at Ivan. I looked him in the eye. We had a little meeting behind the glass and the guy wasn’t angry to me so much as bored. Like this sucks, you know, I got a rubber swing. Humans are interesting but it’s really not my deal. He got transferred to the Atlanta zoo and I visi…
For the full transcript, check out https://bigthink.com/videos/bill-nye-on-gorilla-captivity-in-zoos