Nearly four years ago, a visitor to Brookfield Zoo, outside Chicago, captured an extraordinary event on video. A 3-year-old boy fell into a gorilla enclosure and was knocked unconscious. Within moments, Binti Jua, a female gorilla, approached, picked up the unconscious boy, and cradled him in her arms. Then she walked over and gently put the boy down in front of the caretaker's door. The event captured the nation's heart as newspaper headlines blared: "Gorilla Saves Boy."
Most reports suggested that Binti saved the boy because she felt empathy for him. Although there is no ambiguity about what the gorilla did, there are a lot of questions about why. Did she realize the boy was unconscious? Was she concerned about his well-being? Would she have acted in the same way toward a conscious boy, a cat, a teddy bear, or a bag of potato chips?
Despite what the headlines implied about Binti’s moral fiber, the answer is by no means clear. Studies by developmental psychologists Susan Carey and Frank Keil, for example, have shown that children don’t fully grasp the distinction between when a being is dead or alive until they are almost 10 years old. And to date, no study of ape intelligence comes close to showing that orangutans, gorillas, or chimpanzees have the mental sophistication of a 10-year-old human. We can only guess why Binti did what she did. And one incident is not enough to warrant conclusions.
