Our hearts go out to the family of the little boy who recently fell into the gorilla enclosure and the Cincinnati Zoo, as they have all had to endure a public thrashing for the accident (which ended in the death of sweet Harambe the gorilla). But this isn’t that story. This is a story about a man who willingly jumped into a chimp enclosure to SAVE a life.
In 1990, truck driver Rick Swope- during his family’s annual trip to the Detroit Zoo- witnessed a fight break out between a chimp named Jo-Jo and another male. After the brief scuffle, Jo-Jo tried to escape but instead fell into a deep moat designed to keep him in. And chimps are unable to swim.
From the Dodo article:
“Everyone in the whole place was just standing around watching this monkey drown. When he went down the second time I knew I had to do something.”
Although he was warned by a zookeeper to keep out, Swope sprang into action and climbed the security wall so that he could dive in after Jo-Jo and save him. However, by doing so, he was putting his own life at risk.
It was such a moving act of compassion, that Jane Goodall would later reference at a conference where she was speaking:
After the week we’ve had, I thought we could use a tiny feel good story like this one.
XO- Erin
Source: The Dodo
