2. 外语
  3. The death of Harambe, the endangered lowland gorilla (大猩猩) shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after a 4-year-old crawled through a barri

The death of Harambe, the endangered lowland gorilla (大猩猩) shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after a 4-year-old crawled through a barri

admin2019-10-13  48
问题    The death of Harambe, the endangered lowland gorilla (大猩猩) shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after a 4-year-old crawled through a barrier and fell into his enclosure, was a shocking event. After such a tragedy, it seems someone must be blamed, but fingers are pointed in the wrong direction.
   Many in the animal protection community suggest that Harambe wasn’t a threat to the boy. Gorillas tend not to be aggressive, and if Harambe wanted to hurt the child, he could have done so immediately, not after playing with this curious creature for 10 minutes.
   Did the gorilla care staff do enough to separate Harambe from the child? If they could lure the female gorillas away, why not Harambe? Some activists are calling the killing of Harambe an act of cowardice by incompetent zoo employees. Others are arguing that the boy’s mother is to blame. How could she let her child fall into a wild-animal enclosure? How long did she let her child wander unsupervised before he got through the barriers? Some people suggest that she be deemed legally negligent and charged with causing the death of an endangered animal.
   For me, the real question is not who to blame, but why anyone was in a situation in which they had to make a choice between the life of a human child and the life of an endangered teenage gorilla. Keeping wild animals in captivity is detrimental to their health. This tragic choice arose only because we keep animals in zoos. So why have zoos?
   One of the reasons often given is that zoos protect endangered wild animals. A few zoos, including the Cincinnati Zoo, do fund conservation efforts that are praiseworthy, but captive animals, especially large mammals born in captivity, like Harambe, cannot be "returned to the wild." These sensitive, smart, long-lived gorillas are destined to remain confined, never to experience the freedom of the wild. They are, at best, symbols meant to represent their wild counterparts. Zoos distort our understanding of these wonderful beings and perpetuate the notion that they are here for our purposes.
   If we really need someone to blame, maybe we should look at our society, which supports these types of institutions of captivity. If zoos were more like shelters where captive animals are treated with respect, free from screaming crowds and external dangers, no one would have had to decide to kill Harambe. Kids could see gorillas in cinemas, where their curiosity could be safely satisfied.
In Paragraph Five, the author is trying to______.
选项 A、explain the importance of zoos
B、describe difficulties facing zoos
C、argue against the usefulness of zoos
D、outline the future development of zoos
答案C
解析 第五段最后两句的大意是：动物园中的动物并不能完全代表野生的同类动物。动物园歪曲了我们对这些动物的理解，使我们错误认为这些动物是为人类服务的。这说明作者质疑动物园的合理性。
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