On this day in 2007, an eleven-year-old gorilla named Bokito escaped from his enclosure at the Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands, injured several people and one woman in particular.
The four hundred pound Bokito grabbed the female visitor and dragged her for several hundred metres, inflicting bone fractures. The woman had been a regular to the gorilla enclosure, pressing her hand against the glass and smiling at Bokito, a practice which primatologists discourage with apes likely to interpret this as a form of aggression. The woman had been warned against doing this several times by zoo employees, but she believed that Bokito and herself had a special bond.
Bokito then entered a nearby zoo restaurant, causing panic and consequent injury to three more people. Bokito was eventually sedated by a tranquilliser gun and placed back in to his enclosure.
Following Bokito's escape the word "Bokitoproof" meaning 'durable enough to resist the actions of an enraged gorilla' and by and large ' durable enough to resist the actions of a non-specific extreme situation' was voted as the Dutch language Word of the Year for 2007.
Image available: http://www.flickriver.com/photos/pg-photography/1576247444/
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