Gorilla taunting: If you want to go to Hogwarts, be nice to zoo animals

Children who apparently have never read Harry Potter, and who don’t know that only non-magical kids are mean to zoo animals, were fittingly scared when a gorilla decided it had grown weary of their taunting.

In the now viral video, a group of children yell “You’re ugly!” at a gorilla sitting placidly near the glass at a Dallas zoo, beating their chests in an imitation of more enthusiastic gorillas they might have seen on television. The gorilla watches them, calmly accepting their criticism. 

But suddenly the gorilla has had enough. Well-versed in the art of surprise, as well in the benefits of deadpan facial expressions, it lunges toward the glass and presses its hands and face to the window. The kids scream. And the gorilla saunters off, turning back for one last disapproving look at the appropriately terrified kids.

The kids had it better than Harry Potter’s Dudley Dursley, who taps the glass on a bored boa constrictor’s cage and then later gets his due, ending up sealed behind the glass (in the movie version, at least; in the book, the snake just slithers around his ankles).

Harry, the superstar wizard who goes on to save the whole world, is more restrained with the snake: no tapping, just a casual, pleasant conversation with the exasperated animal about how a little privacy would be nice, sometimes.

The apparent moral: people who tap on glass are non-magical. If you want to go to Hogwarts, be good to gorillas.