The 10-year-old gorilla named Denny broke through one of the three layers of tempered glass that separates him from visitors watching him in his enclosure, KFOR reported on Monday.
No one was hurt during the incident, and zoo officials said Denny was also unharmed. There was another gorilla in the enclosure at the time and the pair will be cared for behind the scenes until the barrier can be fixed.
Video footage showed the moment Denny ran at the glass wall while people watched. Everyone at the scene gasped in shock when it happened.
A zoo visitor named Katya Sutil told reporters people were looking at their phones when the gorilla ran at the glass.
“He hit it with his elbow or forearm, like right in the glass directly in front of my face. When it hit in front me, I was so jolted I fell back a few feet. When I looked up to see what had happened, I saw the gorilla staring directly at me, making eye contact with me, and then a giant crack… 6 feet. It was pretty big,” she recalled.
An image shows the large crack in the glass:
The KFOR article said Denny is a western lowland gorilla. Per the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) website, those are the most numerous and widespread of the subspecies:
Populations can be found in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo, with possibly some remnant populations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The exact number of western lowland gorillas is not known because they inhabit some of the most dense and remote rain forests in Africa. However, significant populations still exist, including in the remote swampy forests of the Republic of Congo.
“Large numbers have not protected the western lowland gorilla from decline. Because of poaching and disease, the gorilla’s numbers have declined by more than 60% over the last 20 to 25 years,” the site noted.
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