Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla, was shot and killed by Cincinnatti Zoo staff this May after a toddler fell into his enclosure. The decision to fatally shoot the gorilla—rather than use nonlethal means such as tranquilizers—outraged many who believed that Harambe was carrying the child around to protect rather than harm it.
Controversy over Harambe’s intent sparked a movement: Petitions were created calling for the parents to be investigated, #JusticeforHarambe trended on social media, and the world’s most famous primatologist, Jane Goodall, weighed in to say footage showed Harambe acting protectively toward the child.
Then, perhaps because his death is widely believed to be unfair, Harambe became immortalized in memes.
And as we all know by know, memes lead to sexual thoughts—which leads to porn.
Wait, what?
Yes, you read that correctly. Harambe is so ever-present in our hearts (and memes) that people have been searching on Pornhub for Harambe porn. Or maybe they aren’t searching for porn at all, but instead for some of the truly beautiful, moving, and completely safe for work memorial videos that creative Pornhub users have posted to the site in recent days.
Regardless of what they’re finding, dedicated fans of the beloved gorilla have been searching Pornhub for Harambe at surprisingly high rates.
In fact, since Harambe’s tragic and untimely death, Pornhub users have searched his name 20,719 times, looking for god knows what exactly. Pornhub has a strict policy against sexual content involving animals (can you say nonconsensual?), and yet the company was happy to provide the number of searches when asked.
The team at Pornhub Insights even crunched the search data at Daily Dot’s request, providing two handy charts that show a sudden spike in Harambe porn interest around August 10—when fans were entering the search term “Harambe” at rates nearly 500 percent higher than usual.
Pornhub Insights for the Daily Dot
And people (you sick, sick bastards) weren’t just searching for Harambe himself on Pornhub. Just a couple of days after Harambe was killed by zoo officials, with the incident dominating national headlines, searches for “gorilla” suddenly spiked by more than 300 percent. Sometimes sex is the only way to find comfort during a period of mourning.
Pornhub Insights for the Daily Dot
Why did interest suddenly peak after two months of almost zero searches for Harambe porn?
The increase in meme activity likely has something to do with it. But the biggest spike in searches came shortly after news broke that another unexpected sex symbol—George W. Bush—had met Harambe’s mother twenty years ago at a zoo in Brownsville, Texas.
Or perhaps the lust for sexy Harambe vids followed on the heels of fervent calls to make Harambe a character in Pokémon Go.
But we like to think that America’s sudden Harambe horniness was directly related to an amazingly weird Super Deluxe video that positions Hillary Clinton as a “meme queen,” telling voters to “Pokémon Go to the polls” and to “Do it for Harambe.” After all, porn searches for Hillary on related tube site xHamster rose by over 500 percent during the Democratic National Convention. Put Hillary and Harambe together and you have an irresistibly erotic cocktail—the Spanish Fly of the internet era.
Mostly likely, though, porn searches for the nation’s most beloved fallen hero stem from the “Dicks out for Harambe” movement—which shares a certain aspect with guys masturbating to online porn.
Whatever the cause, you are all perverted, hopeless monsters, and while sex is good and fine and healthy, this is going too far. Enjoy your Harambe porn, weirdos.