By Marc Bekoff, Ph.D. on February, 09, 2014 in Animal Emotions
Yesterday I wrote about the plight of Marius, a young giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo who was to be killed because he didn’t fit into the zoo’s breeding program. Today I learned he was killed despite another zoo offering to save him. To quote from a BBC article: The director of a wildlife park in the Netherlands said, “Zoos need to change the way they do business.”
Also: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/02/10/giraffe-killed-fed-to-lions-denmark/5364775/
And: http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/10/world/europe/denmark-zoo-giraffe/
Exposing the Big Game 
This makes me so angry, can you tell me more about zoos? I always thought they were involved in real conservation, now I’m not sure.
Whenever there is financial profit as the driving factor, owners and shareholders demanding to see their cents multiplying, then conservation suffers gravely.
The ONLY true conservation institutes are the ones that very carefully balance the amount of people allowed to see “their” animals to get in just the right amount to survive, and of course without the outside pressure from companies or rich individuals. There is NEVER a good excuse to terrorizing and tormenting other animals with big and loud crowds in unnatural environments, which they almost always are.
Here’s some about zoos: The zoo used the baby calf to attract visitors and then slaughtered him. He was shot rather than given a painless lethal injection, just so that his flesh wouldn’t be contaminated when it was cut up in front of horrified schoolchildren and, quite literally, thrown to the lions.
As the events of this weekend illustrate, breeding animals in zoos is not a sustainable practice because of space limitations and also because the practice creates a surplus of unwanted animals. It is estimated that approximately 7,500 animals in European zoos are considered “surplus” at any one time.
https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/if-youre-really-saddened-by-the-death-of-marius-the-giraffe-stop-visiting-zoos/
You know, the last remaining shred of a reason to keep animals in captivity is to protect them for the future. It appears that for zoos, it is just more BS. Protect our wildlife in their natural homelands, and get rid of zoos and marine parks that are nothing more than throwbacks to the Victorian era where exotic animals were curiosities. What is the purpose of putting down this poor animals? Absolutely terrible!!!
Reblogged this on Wolf Is My Soul and commented:
The recent events in Copenhagen Zoo have spurred an epidemic of protests across the globe and rightly so. Why even have a breeding program if there is no plan for the offspring it generates? It can’t be solely for the purpose of feeding the zoo’s predators, can it?
Reblogged this on .
Horrific act by savages!
The thing I find most appalling about this situation is that Marius was killed by a vet. What kind of vet puts down a healthy animal?
The zoo used the baby calf to attract visitors and then slaughtered him. He was shot rather than given a painless lethal injection, just so that his flesh wouldn’t be contaminated when it was cut up in front of horrified schoolchildren and, quite literally, thrown to the lions.
As the events of this weekend illustrate, breeding animals in zoos is not a sustainable practice because of space limitations and also because the practice creates a surplus of unwanted animals. It is estimated that approximately 7,500 animals in European zoos are considered “surplus” at any one time.
https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/if-youre-really-saddened-by-the-death-of-marius-the-giraffe-stop-visiting-zoos/