Earlier this year, Odense zoo dissected a camel, pony and tapir (a creature that looks like a pig with a trunk), without sparking controversy, but Thursday’s dissection was a different matter.
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“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 USA town of Fairfax wrote on the zoo’sFacebook page. Since it was killed and until this Thursday, when it was chopped up, the lion was kept in a freezer.
Adult spectators brought scarfs to their noses to ward off the pungent smell.
Disgusting images showed the severed head of the young lion being held up to the audience, while employees take a knife to the cub’s organs.
She added: “The death of this lion should be a wake-up call for anyone who still harbours the illusion that zoos serve any goal beyond incarcerating intelligent animals for profit”.
Last February the case of the giraffe Marius (killed and cut to pieces in public Zoo Copenhagen) went around the world and prompted protests of animal rights and more. In April, the Danish parliament finally passed a measure that makes bestiality illegal.
The Danish bestiality bill passed after lawmakers expressed concern that Denmark, as one of the last nations in Europe where sex with animals was still legal, was attracting a host of animal sex tourists who came to the country just to fornicate with the furry set.
There was no immediate reaction from Odense Zoo in central Denmark, where the female lion will be dissected publicly Thursday during the annual school fall holiday. This was done in order to prevent inbreeding and is a common practice in zoos throughout Europe.
“Zoos routinely over-breed and kill lions and thousands of other animals deemed surplus to requirements”, she said in a statement. According to the Associated Press, the zoo said the only option for housing this lioness was in an enclosure with her biological father, and at a few point they would likely mate, which would result in a bad case of inbreeding. “We are not chopping up animals for fun”.
The animal was culled after numerous attempts to find another institution of similar high welfare standards to take it were unsuccessful…It is EAZA’s position that culling of animals is one of a range of scientifically valid solutions to the long term genetic and demographic sustainability of animal populations in human care.
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Odense Zoo is not the first in Denmark to face criticism for its tradition of public dissection.
