Marius, a perfectly healthy young male giraffe, was euthanized at the Copenhagen Zoo on Sunday in font of a crowd of onlookers, which included children. A staff veterinarian shot Marius in the head as he bent down to eat. He was then autopsied, skinned, dismembered and fed to the zoo’s apex predators-lions, tigers and leopards-also in front of patrons. The reason for the killing? Staff officials blame “inbreeding.” Bengst Holst, the zoo’s director of research and conservation had this to say about the incident to CNN, “Our giraffes are part of an international breeding program, which has a purpose of ensuring a sound and healthy population of giraffes. It can only be done by matching the genetic composition of the various animals with the available space. … When giraffes breed as well as they do now, then you will inevitably run into so-called surplus problems now and then.”
Marius the giraffe who was euthanized at the Copenhagen Zoo
Several zoos offered to take the animal, including the UK Yorkshire Wildlife Park in England. Director Emeritus of the Columbus Zoo in Ohio and TV Personality Jack Hanna was in total disagreement with the Copenhagen Zoo’s decision to put the giraffe down. He called it “the most abominable, insensitive, ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of.” He went on to say, “I know it’s natural in nature. I’m not an idiot, but I don’t need to have some 2- and 3- and 6-year-olds — they cannot understand at that age. You understand they don’t understand nature. They haven’t been to Africa, so that’s what we do at the zoos. We try to educate people at zoos on what happens in the wild.”
And now the staff at the Copenhagen Zoo are receiving death threats from outraged people around the world. While I do not condone nor support sending death threats to anyone no matter what the circumstance, I certainly am not in agreement with what the Copenhagen Zoo did to Marius the giraffe. There were other wildlife organizations that were willing to take him in, and the zoo didn’t go that route. How do you feel about this issue?
