If you’ve ever visited a zoo, you may have unwittingly taunted gorillas, which see direct eye contact as threatening.

Sadly, the Dutch only began giving glasses to visitors to their gorilla cage after a tourist was mauled by the 350-pound beast.

The glasses were distributed by the Diergaarde Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam after a western gorilla named Bokito broke out of his pen in 2007 and brutally attacked a woman who had been visiting him up to four times a week since he was four months old, according to the information she confirmed to officials after the incident.

The Dutch lady merely assumed she had befriended the gorilla, but Bokito misinterpreted it as an aggressive gesture.

“To mountain gorillas, any person who maintains direct eye contact with them is a challenger and an enemy who comes to destroy the family,” according to the website Gorilla Trek.

“Direct eye contact will cause the silverback to charge and fight you to protect his family. If you want to be calm with gorillas, avoid making eye contact.”

So, if the woman had visited him several times previously, what possessed Bokito to grow so furious as to break out?

Tensions grew when youngsters apparently began throwing rocks at him, but after leaping over the walls of his enclosure, he reportedly focused solely on his frequent visitor, according to accounts at the time.

He pulled her about before biting her, resulting in several fractures and urgent hospitalization.

The horrific encounter ended when armed zookeepers used a tranquilizer pistol to sedate him.

Journalists allegedly learned from the woman’s husband that she had received instructions not to make eye contact with gorillas.

However, she later stated in an interview with the daily De Telegraaf, “If I laugh at him, he laughs back.”

The spectacles, which were designed to deceive Bokito into believing visitors to his enclosure were not gazing at him, were added shortly after; however, it is thought they are no longer distributed.

On Reddit, one member described a similar experience they had upon making eye contact with a gorilla, albeit it wasn’t as horrible.

“I once worked in a zoo during my work experience at the age of 15,” they stated.

“I made the briefest of eye contact with a silverback in the back feeding portion of the enclosure (similar to the stillness of the lamb’s cage, but with a fence), which was enough to prompt it to run toward me and smash against the weak-looking fencing with both fists while grunting hard.

“He then grunted and called to the others, who sloped off their platforms and started trying to get me with sticks and throw hay at me; I was quickly escorted out.”

They continued on the social networking platform: “It was probably because a lovely baby gorilla was banging its chest until it fell over, and I was watching it, while the silverback was watching me in the background.

“They are very much not to be messed with and, like pretty much all other animals, not to be imprisoned for our viewing curiosity.”