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“Have your gorillas ever killed anyone?”

I turned to stare at the man who’d posed the question, trying to decide if he was serious. My training dictated I had to assume he was. “Well, sir,” I began, amicably, “gorillas aren’t violent and aggressive, as King Kong would have you think. They’re actually very peaceful and shy.”

“Yes, but have they ever tried?”

Repeated studies in zoos and aquariums across the nation have shown that people are more drawn to animals that are considered especially ‘beautiful’ or ‘dangerous’. In my opinion gorillas are more the former and only the latter when one treats them as just another ‘dumb’ animal. It was rather obvious to me just which of those attracting traits had drawn this gentleman.

We were standing in the middle of Gorilla Valley, a path between two troop exhibits, in the middle of August under a roasting hot sun, watching a group of one silverback and three females alternatively eat and sit there quietly.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t be deterred. In the ensuing conversation, I pointed out that most gorilla aggression is non-contact, and that as long as he didn’t antagonize the gorillas, they wouldn’t “get angry”. Despite my attempts, as the man turned to leave, I could hear him say to his family “dude, that thing could rip you in half.”

Working with animals means one will inevitably get *those* questions. They’re the questions make one want to stare at the person, as I did, and go “are you serious?”, as I could not ( “Where can we pet the tigers?”). Or the questions that one has heard so many times it makes one want to make a sign and hang it up just so one doesn't have to hear it yet again (“Is that gorilla pregnant?” Understandable, because they have big bellies, but heard about a hundred times a day).

People tend to have the same basic curiousities about animals, across species: what are their names? how much do they weigh? are there babies? And, my personal favorite: can they kill a human?

I've been in the field of environmental education for a whopping six (official) years now. From volunteer work in college to an internship as a front-line interpreter and research intern at Disney's Animal Kingdom, my love for animals and our nature environment has never waned. My love for *those* questions, however, has disappeared rapidly.

Sometimes it makes for a good story. "Hey, you wouldn't believewhat this person asked me today..." It certainly adds a certain amount of spice to daily conversations with guests. Every time, however, the interpreter being posed one of *those* questions has to remind himself or herself that the person posing that question is doing so out of genuine curiosity about the animal. True, it may be misplaced -- like being centered on just how lethal an animal is to a human -- but it is still curiousity nonetheless. *Those* questions can pose a unique opportunity to address something that our society takes for granted, like the idea that gorillas are violent and the best way to get one's attention is to beat your chest at them.

Society shapes a lot of people's fears, for better or worse. The sheer plethora of people who think that a spider bite is always dangerous is proof of that, especially when one looks at the facts: out of nearly 2,000 species in North America alone, only 3 are considered of medical importance (black widow, brown recluse, hobo spider. I'm ignoring the yellow sac spider of the Northeast because I've yet to see a single study that shows, other than anecdotally, that their bite does anything more than hurt like a beesting). You're more likely to die by being struck by lightning than by being bit by a spider. Yet people don't have this irrational fear of lightning that they do of spiders.

One of the biggest struggles for any interpreter is this constant face-off against society. It's an impossible battle -- one person against the propaganda pushed by the sensationalist media -- but I find it's one that a dedicated interpreter simply can't turn away from. To teach others, one mustbe prepared to address their pre-existing conceptions and tear them down.

The same day I met the killer-gorilla obssessed gentleman, I approached a family whose son was chestbeating at one of our bachelor silverbacks. I described to them how gorilla body language is different from our own, and how a "friendly" greeting in human terms (smiling, waving, shouting) is actually perceived as a challenge or threatening display in gorilla terms.

"Act like you're really shy," I told him. "Turn around and look over your shoulder. If he looks at you, drop your eyes quickly and nod your head once. And try to be as absolutely quiet as possible."

Imagine my delight when the entire family, not just the son, tried the 'gorilla-friendly' greeting. The silverback sat down where he was and began to eat -- much more relaxed than the standing 'I'm ready to leave' posture he'd had before. I left the family (quietly) abuzz with a discussion about how they could go home and try it at their local zoo, and myself with a renewed feeling of faith in my ability to change society, one family at a time.