Bokito (gorilla)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bokito

Bokito (Berlin, March 14, 1996) is a male Western Gorilla who lives in Diergaarde Blijdorp, a zoo in the city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He appeared in the news after he escaped from his enclosure and seriously injured a female visitor on May 18, 2007. Born in the Berlin zoo Zoologischer Garten, Bokito was raised by his human attendants after having been rejected by his mother. To reduce the risk of inbreeding, he was transferred to the Diergaarde Blijdorp in August 2005.

On May 18, 2007, Bokito jumped over the ditch that separated his enclosure from the public and violently attacked a woman, dragging her around for tens of meters and inflicting bone fractures as well as more than a hundred bite wounds. He subsequently entered the nearby restaurant, causing panic among the visitors. During this encounter, three more people were injured as a result of the panic. Bokito was eventually sedated with the help of a tranquilizer gun and placed back in his cage.

The woman who was attacked had been a regular visitor to the great apes' enclosure, visiting an average of 4 times per week. She had a habit of touching the glass that separated her from the gorillas, while making eye contact with Bokito and smiling to him, a practice that is discouraged by primatologists, as apes are likely to interpret human smiling as a form of aggressive display. Zoo employees had previously warned her against doing this, but she continued, claiming a special bond with him: in an interview with De Telegraaf, she said "if I laugh at him, he laughs back".^{[citation needed]}

Bokito had escaped before; in the summer of 2004, he climbed the three-meter-high wall of his enclosure in Berlin. On that occasion, he was escorted back to his cage without problems.

The word "Bokitoproof", meaning "durable enough to resist the actions of an enraged gorilla", and by extension "durable enough to resist the actions of a non-specific extreme situation", was voted the Dutch language "Woord van het jaar" (Word of the Year) for 2007.