On Saturday, the wife, my parents-in-law and I went to the San Diego Zoo. A splendid time was had by all.
But riddle me this: When we were at the gorilla exhibit there were two new gorilla mothers who were both nursing at the time of our visit. What confused me was the crowd’s reaction to the nursing. One of the mothers and her little one were leaning against the viewing glass, so she couldn’t have been any closer to the humans watching.
When the mother started nursing that gorilla kid, all the people bunched around the glass to watch and take pictures and videotape the event. Some parents were so excited, they ushered their children over to watch, pointing and smiling. They uttered phrases like “how magical,” and “isn’t that just amazing.”
First off, leave that poor gorilla mother alone. Granted she should know better than to nurse by the glass…maybe she is some kind of kinky monkey exhibitionist.
But more curious was this reaction to breast-feeding for gorillas versus humans. Because I am sure if there was a human mother nursing a kid on the gorilla viewing benches most people would have been up in arms about how that lady should feed that kid in private and so on.
Now I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a gorilla’s teat and a little gorilla dude up close, but there is a reason their DNA is nearly the same as ours. (I am assuming all my readers are human.) If I didn’t have my glasses on, I could easily confuse gorillas with chubby, midget humans. (The difference being that they have that foot-thumb which I am personally jealous of as I think it could come in super handy more often than you might think.)
Gorilla equality now!
I don’t know if “equality” means we should shun gorilla breast-feeding in public as well, or accept human breast-feeding in public. But I do know this. If it is the later, it is unacceptable in either the case of a gorilla or human breast-feeding to zoom in on the mom’s boobs with a video camera and utter phrases like “magical” and “exquisite.”
On a side note, I have to express some disappointment in all the monkeys at the zoo. Not one picked up their poo and threw said feces at any other primate.