Last year, a zoo in the capital Copenhagen came under fire after a healthy giraffe was euthanised and dissected in public.
Advertisement
She added: “The death of this lion should be a wake-up call for anyone who still harbours the illusion that zoos serve any objective beyond incarcerating intelligent animals for profit”.
Swabe says zoos have “an ethical responsibility” and can use contraceptive options “to manage reproduction, prevent inbreeding (and) maintain genetically healthy populations”.
Biologists at the Odense Zoo, in Denmark’s third-largest city, were not prepared for an worldwide outcry when they scheduled today’s public dissection of the lion, which they had killed in February when she was nine months old.
The Local says the dissection was witnessed by hundreds of zoo visitors, among them children.
She said they could also have killed one other because they would have been kept in the same enclosure. Because this is educational, the children, perhaps already scarred for life, are encouraged to ask questions.
Odense Zoo has done public dissections for 20 years.
Zoo guide Lotte Tranberg told the assembled crowd the lion had been killed several months ago because it had reached sexual maturity and officials were concerned about potential inbreeding.
But many others jumped to the zoo’s defense, arguing that the dissection provided an invaluable learning experience for the children in the crowd. The staff have not decided what they will do with the lions yet.
Tranberg talked about the lives of big cats before cutting up the stiff carcass of the lion, which had white tuffs of fur on its legs and stomach.
“It smelled really bad but it was exciting to see what the lion looks like inside”.
The zoo would’ve probably gotten away with killing this lion and shoving it in a freezer for safekeeping had it not staged this Thursday’s macabre and completely uncalled for performance.
However, the zoo said Wednesday “threats or foul language” would be deleted after coarse language in English was used.
“I am now embarrassed to admit that my great grandmother was 100 percent Danish after hearing of your plans to slaughter animals”, Laura O’Hara from the United States town of Fairfax wrote on the zoo’sFacebook page.
Odense Zoo is not the first in Denmark to face criticism for its tradition of public dissection.
Advertisement
In Denmark, where farming is an important part of the economy, schoolchildren sometimes visit slaughterhouses on tours that include watching pigs on the slaughter line.
