How is Copenhagen Zoo still functioning? Now they kill off 4 lions?

It’s gross and disgusting to me, knowing there are valid preserves available. The cubs and the giraffe were killed for no reason imo.

They followed all rules for humane treatment of zoo animals. Maybe they need to revise their rules to offer up extra animals for free. The flip side is that the animals might end up somewhere where they will be poorly treated or mistreated. Then we will again feel bad for them.

My thinking is that the Zoo is doing the right thing, as repulsive as it sounds.

In a jungle, a weak, older lion would have been attacked by younger ones for dominance of the group. And it would have lost and been killed by the new, younger generation. Keeping the old one alive at the zoo essentially stultifies the entire breeding / pack dominance process because the old one hangs around too long.

The continued existence of the old lion in fact is anti-nature, in that it totally screws up the generation replacement process.

Moving it to a preserve elsewhere wouldn’t work either. First, the Copenhagen Zoo was where the lions lived for years. Adjustment to a preserve is by no means a sure thing; it’s likely to have died soon after arrival. The zoo was its home; it had friends in the keepers, and other animals, and wrenching it out to a new environment would be like putting your grandmother in an old-age home.

And it’s quite likely that the new environment would have the same issues about dominance and elader of the pack. So what has been accomplished?

@elbanditoroso

It’s just crazy to me that there are no sanctuaries for such animals, or other zoos willing to take them on…

My stance is it’s not like lions are alley cats free to roam and reproduce wherever they are and are abundant in the world, these animals will be formely majestic creatures one day and they’re just being used for entertainment purposes and the very least they could live dignified lives at the expense of the many millions those zoos probably bring in each year because of their product, the animals.

There needs to be a place willing to take the animals off their hands!

I have no idea, but maybe they actually know more about animal conservation than I do though.

Yes, there are limited slots for individuals of various species, especially those that are part of a conservation breeding program in which individuals are rated based on the desirability of their genes.

Yes, controlling what happens to zoo “overflow” is important so that these animals don’t wind up living short, miserable lives as “pets” or as a part of a canned hunt.

Yes, the general populace believes that there are safe “refuges” for all of these surplus animals, and yes, they’d be completely wrong. (I speak from direct experience.)

But it is completely irresponsible not to control and prevent the breeding of animals to produce unwanted offspring that will be destroyed. There are chemical methods, surgical methods, breeding loans and trades…so many options to prevent just these sorts of situations.

Shame on the zoo community for not stepping up to say that this archaic approach to population control within zoos is indefensible.

^^ I was waiting for the expert. GA.

http://imgur.com/wy0ES6x

Come on. People are being slaughtered right now and you are worried about a lion. And what is wrong with children seeing a giraffe being eaten? Animals die. People die. Animals eat each other. Should we just keep this a secret?

You want to open up the can of worms about innocent people being killed by guns every year in America?