One Big Leap for a Gorilla, One Small Murder for Mankind

The article "Gorilla leapt over wall, officials say" tells a story of a "gorilla that was shot to death by police after breaking out of its enclosure at the Dallas Zoo in March escaped by leaping from a mound of dirt over a 12-foot wall."

Gorillas have no underground railroad, no Warshaw sewers, no ways to communicate their stories of slavery and genocide. Like the ancestors of today's African-Americans, they've been snached from their homes, taken across the sea never to return. Those who remain free face extinction more surely than the Jews in Nazi Germany, their population just a shadow of its former self.

Yet, their genetic material (as I recall) differs from hominids' for just a few percent. They are capable of using sign language, of caring and bragging, of love and hate. They are far less violent than "humans."

Unless they evolve and take over the world soon, there will be no "Roots." No "Night." When we kill them all, we will make computer simulatated interpretations of their lives, and sad movies similar to those about the Indians/Native Americans. If Nazis had won the World War II, would the "pure aryan" people in their distant future of such a society write sad stories and make tragic movies about the doomed yet romantic "subhuman" "races?"