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Gorillas in the Midst (of a Moral Conundrum)

In 2016, a Cincinnati Zoo worker shot and killed a Western lowland gorilla to protect a three-year-old boy who had fallen into the animal’s enclosure. This incident involves a variant of the classical trolley problem, one in which the death of a human being on the main track might be avoided by selecting an alternate track containing a member of an endangered species. This problem raises two important questions for environmental ethics. First, what, if anything, imbues a human child with greater value than a member of a critically endangered species? Second, is it ethical for zoos to house species such as gorillas? With regard to the first question, at a minimum, it is not obvious whether a human child or a gorilla has the greater value (i.e., that whatever evaluation one wishes to make, it requires an argument beyond simple speciesism). With regard to the second question, an appeal can be made to Japanese environmental philosophy, particularly the ethical paradigm of kyōsei (symbiosis) and the aesthetics of Yuriko Saitō. Members of endangered species have intrinsic value, which entails human obligations to protect the species as a whole and minimize harm to its specimens.