A gorilla at an Australian zoo tries to help an apparently injured bird in the gorilla’s enclosure. (ViralHog via YouTube)
Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
THE ZOO — Nature can be a brutal, unforgiving place.
Battles for territories, mates and survival are often deadly in the wild, and an injured animal most likely won’t survive. It’s so brutal that we, as humans, had to find a kinder-sounding euphemism for it — the “circle of life.”
The bright side is that the circle of life also includes the many beautiful and wondrous things found in nature. Watch any David Attenborough-narrated documentary and often you can see the beauty in the danger.
Today, we’ll visit the gentler side of nature at a zoo in New South Wales, Australia.
In this video, patrons are filming a gorilla, hoping he’s coming up to the window to interact with them. But what they witness is a much sweeter experience.
The gorilla doesn’t give them one glance, but it approaches a little, still bird a few feet in front of the window. Then it gets on the bird’s level and looks it right in the face.
People watching realize the bird must be injured, and it’s clear that the gorilla is also aware. It seems to know that the nature of the bird is to fly, and it gently encourages it to start moving. Amazingly, the gorilla even seems a little frightened of the bird, pulling it’s hand back quickly when the bird seems to move a bit.
Of course, there’s not much a gorilla can do to help a bird, and it walks away.
Based on that interaction, one would like to think the gorilla was going to go “ask” the keepers for help, but the video ends before the fate of the bird is clear.
It’s the circle of life, and it rules us all. (Couldn’t end without quoting the lyric from the “Lion King,” obviously).
