Last Saturday, this cute, yet somewhat terrifying baby gorilla was born at the Oklahoma City Zoo. She weighed 4-pounds and probably needs her eyebrows trimmed:
Unfortunately, the baby's mom decided to take advantage of our state's "Safe Haven" laws and abandoned her child.
Via News 9:
The Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden welcomes a new member to the family. A female Western lowland gorilla was born in the early hours of Saturday, August 16, inside a Great EscApe day room to mother Ndjole and father Togo.
The baby gorilla weighed a little more than four pounds at birth, and she appears healthy and strong. However, zoo officials said the mother has not demonstrated any signs of maternal care toward her baby since giving birth, and the Zoo’s veterinarian team and gorilla keepers have made the decision to hand rear the infant.
“Ndjole was given several opportunities to bond with her baby within the first 24 hours and didn’t show any interest in her, putting the newborn’s life at risk,” said OKC Zoo Veterinarian Dr. Jennifer D’Agostino.
According to officials, caregivers will provide around-the-clock care for the infant gorilla in an off-exhibit area in Great EscApe to keep the baby in close proximity to other gorillas. It is the Zoo’s goal to explore every option to reunite the infant with other gorillas as soon as possible.
That's depressing. Ndjole better return all the gifts the other female gorillas gave her at the baby shower. You can't keep the stuff if you reject the baby.
Obviously, once news broke that a cute little baby gorilla was born at the zoo, the social media bandits from all four TV news stations pounced on the clickable OMG! CUTE! ADORABLE! story and posted it on Facebook. As we know, there's nothing they love more than a like-inducing post about an animals.
Unfortunately, this woke up some Derplahomans who were sound asleep in their double wides. Never afraid to share their racist, 19th century views on the world, they took a break from sewing confederate flags to dazzle us with their sophisticated humor.
Here are 18 totally real Facebook comments I took from the Channel 4, Channel 5 and Channel 9 Facebook pages.
Serious question: do the local news channels not have anyone out there to moderate their Facebook pages? How can you allow blatantly racist stuff like that? The right to free speech doesn't protect you from being a racist on someone else's Facebook wall.
To bait the Derplahomans, the fledgling KOCO Channel 5 Social Media Bandit even asked for suggestions on the name. What could go wrong with that?
In all fairness, not everyone posted something blatantly racist. I'd say 95% of the comments were positive and had nothing to do with race. Some people even took on the racists:
Anyway, I hope everything turns out well for the yet to be named baby gorilla. On a positive note, at least she's a gorilla and isn't aware of how idiotic, stupid and embarrassing some of the humans out there in the world can be.
