Danish Zoo Mismanagement Results in Further Poor Behaviour

A Danish zoo plans to dissect a one-year-old female lion who was put down with a bolt gun some time ago and stored in a freezer. The dissection will take place in front of anyone who wishes to attend including children and is said to be for educational reasons and not entertainment. There are protests about this although in general the Danish people find it acceptable.

Female lion

The problem is this. The reason why they deliberately killed this one-year-old female lion is because there wasn’t enough space in the zoo and she was likely to inbreed with her father which quite obviously the management wished to avoid. That said inbreeding between captive wild cat species is not uncommon. They have small gene pools to work from – a failing of zoos as I see it.

They say putting the female lion to sleep was a last resort but surely the fact that they got to the position where they had to deliberately kill a one-year-old female lion indicates that they are mismanaging their zoo. Why can’t they ensure that they they limit the number of lions to a maximum number? Perhaps they thought they could sell the lion to another zoo and failed in that objective. In March 2014 I reported the killing of four lions in a Copenhagen zoo due to there being to many lions at the zoo; a similar problem.

They say that they are engaged in conservation but for the life of me I can’t see any conservation work in what they are doing by breeding too many lions and then having to kill them at a young age and then dissect them for so-called educational purposes.

The manager says that their purpose is to preserve species not individual animals. That seems to be a very coldhearted statement and not the sort of statement that should be made by a person in charge of looking after animals.

The same zoo faced protests not so long ago after a healthy 2-year-old giraffe was put down to prevent inbreeding and was then, in the same way, dissected in front of a crowd which included children and then (the final ignominy) feed to lions.

The management say that people should not mix up animals and people and we should have a different attitude towards animals than we do towards people and that this difference in attitude justifies what they are doing.

There seems to be something wrong with this attitude, at least for me. Zoos don’t help conservation, in truth. Some zoos might help in a minor way but in general zoos are a failure in that respect so when a Danish zoo behaves like this it is hard to justify their existence except for the purpose of making money out of exploiting animals. That’s the bottom line.

2 thoughts on “Danish Zoo Mismanagement Results in Further Poor Behaviour”

  1. The author of the best comment will receive an Amazon gift of their choice at Christmas! Please comment as they can add to the article and pass on your valuable experience.
  2. Wow, that is horrible !!! That poor lion was only 1 year old…..that is about the equivalent to a 7 year old child..it sickens me to hear about senseless acts of cruelty towards cats and all other species of animals but it makes it even harder to read about it when there was a better alternative ….this is their world too. And humans forget that we are animals too…lions and other animals are not “things”….anyway , who would even want to see that poor lion that was killed at only one year old being dissected ????? Something like that would stick with me for the rest of my life…it just discusts me !!!!!

    Reply
    • Most people would strongly agree with you Kevin. What they are doing feels wrong. They have the wrong attitude as far as I am concerned.

      Reply

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