“What the HELL do those idiots think they are doing with that poor kid???”
Moral luck is the daily phenomenon where the exact same irresponsible act by an individual can be regarded as cause for condemnation or even criminal penalties, or be shrugged off as a forgivable error in judgment and inconsequential based on turns of fate that the individual has no control over at all. You will see few better examples than this ridiculous story out of Cleveland. Parents visiting the Cleveland zoo dangled their 2-year-old son over the railing of the zoo’s cheetah exhibit, then dropped the child, apparently accidentally, into the enclosure.The cheetahs wisely decided that the offspring of idiots might not be safe to eat, and made no effort to harm him. The boy’s father rescued the boy by jumping into the exhibit area and taking his son to safety. The boy was injured slightly, but it is likely that the incident will be treated as an accident, with no consequences for the parents. If, however, the cheetahs had attacked and killed the toddler, the parents would have been prosecuted, and condemned across social media as contenders for worst parents of the year.
It was all up to the cheetahs.
That’s moral luck.
Ethics Alarms 
It is my understanding that child endangerment charges will be filed. This story reminds me of a horrific incident in 2012 when a mother accidentally dropped her child into an african painted dog enclosure at the the Pittsburgh
Zoo. The child was mauled to death and the parents sued or attempted to sue the zoo. As far as I’m aware no charges were ever filed against the mother, presumably under the theory “she has suffered enough”.
How many onlookers regretted not having their Iphone video apps at the ready?
I would have been too busy screaming to record anything.
You would have made a good witness, though. And screaming is a form of taking responsibility. It’s an alarm in itself.
Or are live eyewitnesses on their way out? Not that he technology would have made much of a difference in 1964, though. The “diffusion of responsibility” that let so many passers-by see Kitty Genovese’s murder without doing anything would be even further diffused today — one step further removed from Doing Something by viewing it through a lens, brightly. Screaming is a good thing.
This story reminded me of another zoo cheetah story. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/27/white-tailed-deer-jumps-into-cheetah-enclosure-at-national-zoo-killed-by/
I don’t know if these parents should lose custody of their child, but I think they should attend mandatory parenting classes for the next 12 years or so.
Fun cheetah fact — they can be domesticated. They were often pets of the nobility in ancient times and a few whacky families have cheetahs today.
Just a word of caution from an old country boy…never, EVER believe that you have domesticated a wild animal, especially a cat. It could be the death of you.
They are only classified as cats because we didn’t know what else to call them. They don’t have retractable claws, and are reputedly very dog-like.
Well, you learn something new every day! Here I was, thinking they were genuine cats. Lesson learned.
Honestly, though, not even domesticated dogs and cats are really completely “safe.” I’m sure that our house cats would have us for lunch if we weren’t so much bigger than them, and domestic dogs are really just inbred wolves. We humans just happen to be really good (most of the time) at establishing our dominance over them in a way that’s fully convincing to the dogs.
It’s a little known fact that cheetahs are so alike genetically that it’s believed that they were once down to a very small population and only barely managed to avoid extinction. They were, in fact, domesticated in ancient times by the households of kings and paraded around as a symbol of royalty. The portraits on the walls of the Palace of Minos on Crete make this particularly evident.