| NAME: | Jambo |
| SPECIES: | Lowland silverback gorilla |
| DATE: | August 31, 1986 |
| LOCATION: | Jersey Zoo, island of Jersey, England |
| SITUATION: | Injured child falls into gorilla enclosure |
| WHO WAS SAVED: | Five-year-old Levan Merritt |
| LEGACY: | Famous “Gentle Giant” showed the world that King Kong had a heart of gold |
Born in a Swiss zoo in 1961, Jambo, a lowland silverback gorilla, was the first male gorilla to be born in captivity. His name is Swahili for “hello,” and that friendly greeting would come to perfectly suit Jambo, who, one sunny summer day in 1986, displayed an act of kindness that helped change forever the belief that gorillas were inherently violent and aggressive.
The 1933 movie King Kong had something to do with the “killer ape” reputation. But also, into the 1980s, many scientists still regarded apes, and indeed most animals, as instinct-driven, unthinking, unfeeling brutes. One of the few who didn’t was primatologist Jane Goodall, whose controversial, groundbreaking research on chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park started the year before Jambo was born. Goodall proposed that apes and monkeys had feelings, were capable of rational thought, and even exhibited individual personalities. For decades, Goodall was roundly disparaged and dismissed as engaging in romanticized anthropomorphism.
After all, King Kong fell in love with Fay Wray, but that only happened in the movies.
A BAD FALL
On August 31, 1986, the Merritt family visited the Jersey Zoo on Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands off England’s southern coast. When they arrived at the gorilla enclosure—a landscaped outdoor greenspace unmarred by protective bars—Stephen Merritt hoisted his five-year-old son, Levan, on top of the chest-high protective barrier. The exhibit’s seven gorillas were at the base of the wall, and Levan couldn’t see them.
Then Stephen turned to pick up his other son, Lloyd, and in that moment’s distraction, Levan fell.
The boy struck the concrete wall on the way down, landing twenty feet below, face down and unconscious, with blood visible on the back of his head. “When I looked down,” Stephen Merritt said, “I thought he was dead.”
At first, the gorillas jumped back, but then several moved toward Levan to investigate. These included a male named Rafiki, the female Nandi with her child, as well as Jambo. As they got close, Jambo suddenly positioned himself between the boy and the others in what appeared to be a protective gesture, as if he were saying, “Do not touch.”
Afterward, what Jambo intended with this behavior was hotly debated. It could be that Jambo wasn’t protecting Levan, but was protecting his gorilla family from an intruder. Or perhaps he was establishing dominance so he could investigate first. Either way, Jambo then sat next to the boy for about ten minutes, occasionally stroking his back very gently and carefully with his fingers, and once sniffing them for scent. At one point, Jambo also looked at the crowd with a curious expression, which one witness interpreted as asking, “What is he doing here?”
“Instead of tearing him limb from limb,” Stephen Merritt said later, “the gorilla was being caring. Then, as the six other gorillas moved in, he stood guard and wouldn’t let any of them near my son. It was tenderness that I would never have thought possible.”
HYSTERIA AND HOBBIT
Meanwhile, chaos reigned among the zoo visitors who were watching. The growing mass of onlookers was crazy with fear that the gorillas would hurt the child. Levan’s mother, Pauline, was screaming so hysterically she had to be pulled away. Others wanted to throw rocks to scare the gorillas off. This idea was squelched, but the wild shouting and shrieking continued.
Zoo personnel knew they needed to rescue Levan quickly; for one thing, if he didn’t wake up soon, he might slip into a coma. None of the options for subduing the gorillas—such as driving them away or tranquilizing them—could be done quickly and without risk of making the situation worse.
Then, after about ten minutes, Levan woke up on his own and started screaming. This shocked the gorillas, and they all immediately moved across the enclosure toward their covered living quarters, with Jambo leading the way. As they did, zoo employees jumped in and herded the gorillas inside.
But just when the situation seemed under control, another gorilla, a seven-year-old male named Hobbit, broke away.
In stark contrast to Jambo, Hobbit was agitated and excited as he peeled off from the group. Hobbit raced aggressively back and forth across the grassy slope, while two zookeepers stood their ground near Levan, driving Hobbit away each time he swooped by. Hobbit gave every impression of wanting to approach or grab the boy, and his actions grew increasingly bold. Hobbit even threw rocks in their direction. Now that Jambo was gone, the situation deteriorated.
As this was happening, ambulance worker Brian Fox jumped in and began tending to Levan in the enclosure. The boy’s spine seemed okay, and he was capable of being moved. Brian gathered up the child, tied a lowered rope around himself, and together they were pulled out to safety to the accompaniment of wild applause.
Levan was immediately taken to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for a broken arm and fractured skull. He eventually made a full recovery.
“THE GENTLE GIANT,” A NEW FILM STAR
As luck would have it, amateur videographer Brian LeLion was there the day Levan Merritt fell into the Jersey Zoo gorilla enclosure, and he captured almost the entire rescue on tape. This home movie, made in the days before cell phone cameras and “selfies,” turned Jambo into “the gentle giant,” the biggest celebrity ape since King Kong stormed the Empire State Building.
Even without video, Jambo’s story would have made world headlines, but with it, TV news broadcasts across the globe ate it up. Once people saw the clips, they found it hard to dismiss the apparent compassion in Jambo’s behavior as he stroked the unmoving child at his feet and kept the other gorillas at bay. Plus, Hobbit’s behavior made clear that the boy needed protecting. Not every gorilla would necessarily respond the same way.
Indeed, in just the ways Jane Goodall had proposed, Jambo was an exceptional gorilla, one with the seeming ability to problem-solve, make individual choices, and provide real care. Today, science has largely vindicated Good-all: All four great ape species—gorillas, orangutans, bonobos, and chimpanzees—are credited with displaying self-awareness, empathy, compassion, and a high degree of social intelligence.
Great apes are capable of viciousness as well; Goodall also famously documented deadly violence among chimpanzees. Just like humans, apes can choose when to be kind and when to be cruel. But as well-respected primatologist Frans de Waal has written, “The male gorilla, despite his ferocious King Kong reputation, is a born protector. The horrifying tales of gorilla attacks with which colonial hunters used to come home were designed to impress us with human rather than gorilla bravery. But in fact, a charging gorilla male is prepared to die for his family.”
Film of Jambo’s kindness helped change pop culture and slow the knee-jerk skepticism of the scientific community. Yet it came as no real surprise to the person who knew Jambo best, his keeper, Richard Johnstone-Scott.
“He reacted in just the way I would expect him to,” said Johnstone-Scott. “He has the strength of ten men but the heart of a lamb.”
DARWIN’S STORY: PROTECT THE KEEPER
Humans, apes, and monkeys are all primates. In broad terms, monkeys are distinguished from apes (and humans) by their smaller size and tails. Also, many scientists do not think that monkeys, despite their obvious intelligence and sociability, exhibit the same level of self-awareness as apes.
Like apes, and us, monkeys have the capacity for both cruelty and kindness. They may even be capable of brave altruism. Scientist Charles Darwin, who developed the theory of evolution, certainly felt monkeys were capable of courage and compassion. To illustrate, he repeated this story of a life-saving rescue that had been told to him:
“Several years ago a keeper at the Zoological Gardens showed me some deep and scarcely healed wounds on the nape of his own neck, inflicted on him, whilst kneeling on the floor, by a fierce baboon. The little American monkey, who was a warm friend of this keeper, lived in the same compartment, and was dreadfully afraid of the great baboon. Nevertheless, as soon as he saw his friend in peril, he rushed to the rescue, and by screams and bites so distracted the baboon that the man was able to escape, after, the surgeons thought, running great risk to his life.”