Other Animal (But Non-Buggy) Crackers

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Documented: Child falls into gorilla enclosure at the zoo and is injured; instead of harming it the gorilla stands guard until the child is rescued.

This incident happened in 1986 at the Jersey Zoo in the Channel Islands. At the time, gorillas were widely thought of as vicious monsters; when a five-year-old boy fell into the gorilla enclosure and was knocked unconscious, people expected him to be torn limb from limb. Instead, the male gorilla stood over the boy, apparently protecting him, until human assistance arrived. News footage of this incident was shown worldwide and is credited by Gerald Durrell, then the zoo's director, with "help[ing] to change the image of the gorilla for ever".

Cite: Botting, Douglas. Gerald Durrell: the authorized biography. Carroll & Graf (New York, NY) 1999.