I have nothing to back it up but from personal experience most people do hate the idea of bad things happening to animals, it's just most of it is out of sight, out of mind. They don't think about where their steaks come from or, even if you'd point towards some monkey killing buisiness in the wild as per harambe, where the factory feed comes from. Doesn't really matter whether they're aware of the links there or not, it's just how things is.

But then Harambe isn't how things is, there's not supposed to be children in gorilla enclosures. Of course, the question as to whether there should even be gorilla enclosures also doesn't play - that's just how things is - but the child in the gorilla enclosure is where their brain starts to connect "this was unnecessary", because it's easily solved, Cincinnati Zoo just has to put up some bigger fences or whatever, job's done, animal cruelty issue solved.