Reddit Investors Use GameStop Winnings to Adopt Endangered Animals

2021-03-19

Excerpt from this story from EcoWatch:

Reddit investors have found a way to meme for good.

The amateur investors on subreddit WallStreetBets often refer to themselves as apes and use the phrase “Apes Together Strong,” BBC News reported. Now, some subreddit members have started to take this saying literally. Within days, Redditors have raised $350,000 for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund by adopting more than 3,500 gorillas, The Guardian reported.

“It’s safe to say that the#investor community on@reddit is not traditionally who we think of as our supporter base. But they definitely surprised and overwhelmed us over the weekend,” the conservation group tweeted.

The trend began last Friday when Reddit user Pakistani_in_MURICA posted an adoption certificate for a mountain gorilla named Urungano. The post received a 92 percent upvote rate and prompted many other users to follow suit.

The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund works with mountain gorillas in Rwanda and Grauer’s gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to BBC News. On Twitter, the group said that the new funds would support their work studying and monitoring gorillas, and supporting the people who live near them.

The organization told The Guardian that it usually receives 20 new gorilla adoptions a weekend, a far cry from the thousands that the Redditors initiated.