When visiting the zoo, you might unknowingly provoke gorillas, as they perceive direct eye contact as a threat.
In the Netherlands, the solution to this issue comes in the form of glasses distributed to visitors at the gorilla enclosure. This measure was introduced after an incident where a guest was attacked by a gorilla weighing 350 pounds.
The Diergaarde Blijdorp zoo in Rotterdam began handing out these glasses following a 2007 incident in which a western gorilla named Bokito escaped his enclosure and attacked a woman. She had been visiting him regularly since he was just four months old, a fact she confirmed to authorities after the attack.
The woman believed she had established a friendship with the gorilla, while Bokito interpreted her actions as hostile.
The website Gorilla Trek explains, “To mountain gorillas, any person who keeps direct eye contact with them is a challenger and an enemy who comes to destroy the family. Direct eye contact will therefore force the silverback to charge and fight you in order to defend his family. If you want to be peaceful with gorillas, you should avoid eye contact.”
This brings up the question of why, after numerous previous visits, Bokito became aggressive enough to escape his enclosure.
The tension reportedly escalated when children began throwing rocks at him, but once he breached the walls, his focus was solely on the woman who visited him frequently, as per reports from the time.
Bokito dragged her, inflicting multiple fractures before hospitalizing her due to the injuries.
The dramatic incident ended when armed zookeepers subdued him with a tranquilizer gun.
According to reports, the woman’s husband mentioned that she had been warned against maintaining eye contact with gorillas.
However, she later told De Telegraaf newspaper: “If I laugh at him, he laughs back.”
Following the incident, glasses designed to deceive Bokito into thinking guests were not looking at him were distributed, though they are no longer in use.
A Reddit user recounted a similar, albeit less severe, experience involving eye contact with a gorilla.
“I once worked in a zoo on work experience at 15,” they shared. “I made the briefest of eye contact with a silverback at the back feeding part of the enclosure… that was enough to of caused it to run at me and smash against the weak-looking fencing with both fists and grunting heavily.
“He then grunt called to the others, who sloped off their platforms and started trying to get me with sticks and throw hay at me, I was quickly escorted out.”
In their Reddit post, they continued: “It was prob because a cute baby gorilla was bashing its chest till it fell backwards and I was watching that, and the silverback was watching me in the background. They are very much not to be messed with and like pretty much all other animals, not to be imprisoned for our viewing curiosity.”