In 2007, after one of their gorillas, Bokito, escaped and attacked a women who stared at him every day, the Rotterdam Zoo started handing out glasses that tricked the gorillas to avoid stare
To add to this, A lot of gorillas that are saved from unsafe/illegal conditions cannot go back into the wild. Places like The Rotterdam zoo provides a lot of enrichment for these animals that you won’t see at say, Joe’s roadside animal park.
Another lie of capitalism. Species don't have inherent value, individuals of a species do. Which is why bad treatment of those individuals can't be justified by appealing to the species' survival.
It's about money, like everywhere else.
Whey do you mean? We entirely dominate them, and transparently acknowledge all species on this planet are either our commercial resources, or our entertainment
Zoo employees had previously warned her against doing this, but she continued, claiming a special bond with him: in an interview with De Telegraaf she said, "When I smile at him, he smiles back".
If only I could have been that one employee who got to visit her in the hospital and whisper "told ya".
They then moved the gorilla to a different city, and she followed the gorilla there and continued to stare at him. After he mauled her in the cafe, he just sat around peacefully and waited for the zookeepers to take him away.
The 180 kg (397 lb) Bokito seriously injured a woman, who it later emerged has visited the ape almost every day since his arrival at the zoo a year and a half ago
Dutch citizens lost sympathy for the woman after it emerged that she has visited the gorilla about four times a week and said that Bokito "remains her darling" despite suffering a broken arm and wrist and around 100 bites.
Dutch Media widely reported that the woman misunderstood what she perceived as a smile from the gorilla. Experts suggest he was more likely to have been baring his teeth as a threat.
Fun fact: This incident was huge news in The Netherlands and inspired the new term "bokito-proof," meaning strong enough to withstand or contain a gorilla.
Found a Reddit thread about this. Some of the users further down in the comments did some digging and found this old news article. Other Redditors mentioned that they don't give out the glasses anymore, and that the glasses were mainly a marketing plot by an ad agency.
The week after Bokito's escape, a local health insurance company sponsored the production of 2,000 BokitoKijkers ("Bokito viewers"), paper visors which disguised the direction of the wearer's gaze. The visors were designed by advertising agency DDB Amsterdam, and won a Bronze Lion for promotional material at the 2008 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, and a Eurobest Silver at the 2007 Eurobest European Advertising Festival.
The word "bokitoproof", meaning "durable enough to resist the actions of an enraged gorilla" and by extension "durable enough to resist the actions of a non-specific extreme situation" was voted the Word of the Year for 2007 in the Netherlands.