Anti-cruelty campaigners really need a reality check
Zookeepers in Copenhagen are receiving death threats after they killed (with a single bullet) a giraffe at the zoo and then fed the corpse to the zoo’s lions.
The feeding was done in front of visitors, including children, to give those who are detached from reality a basic lesson in the natural food chain.
This was considered horrendous, because apparently, today’s children are expected to grow up thinking that animals wear clothes, speak in words, are tucked into bed by their mothers, and have nice little chats with humans. They do not, repeat not, kill and eat each other.
Well, if lions did not kill and eat other creatures, including giraffes, there would be no lions in wild. If the animal rights activists were to have their way, all carnivorous animals in the wild would be corralled and forced to live on a diet of dried food pellets. Ah, but then what would be pellets be made of?
Nature is red in tooth and claw, and the most well-adjusted children understand this.
So yes, preferably this giraffe should have gone to another zoo if it was surplus to requirements in Copenhagen, but then again, zoos are in the business of zoo management, not saving animals’ lives for the sake of it. Once the animal had been shot, it would have been ridiculously wasteful to dispose of the corpse in any way other than by doing as nature intended, and using it to feed the lions and perpetuate, in the highly artificial situation of a zoo, the natural food chain.
When the zoo lions are fed with dead sheep and cows, nobody protests. But a giraffe is cute, and this one even had a name. Yes, it is really rather disturbing seeing that giraffe’s face, but then again, cows have faces too, and quite soulful eyes. It’s just that we never bother to look at them because they are so common.
I wouldn’t recommend allowing a very small child to see the scene that provoked such a fuss at Copenhagen zoo, largely because blood and guts are disturbing to them whatever the situation as they are too young to understand. But where older children are concerned, any shock they might feel is a direct consequence of living in a society which anthropomorphises animals with clothes, bows, furniture, human emotions and human conversation.
Nature documentaries routinely show lions killing and eating animals. Perhaps what children might find difficult accepting in a scene such as that at Copenhagen zoo is the participation of humans in this activity, if they have been raised to believe that the lion is naughty but cannot help itself, and the duty of people is to save the gazelle/giraffe from the lion (whereupon the lion will starve, but that bit is left out).
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140210/world/zoo-kills-healthy-young-giraffe-feeds-to-lions.506199#.UvoJivtKjxR
For once I don’t agree with you. If I want my children to see lions eating a giraffe, I take them on a safari, not to Copenhagen zoo.
[Daphne – Unfortunately, tinnat, not everybody is in the fortunate position of being able to take their children on an African safari. That is PRECISELY why zoos exist in the contemporary world, as the means of education, not entertainment: to display animals to people who cannot afford to see them in the wild. Whether one agrees with this form of captivity or not (and I don’t like it) is another matter. The parents who didn’t agree with this action were free to move their children to another part of the zoo. I find it very hard to believe that children watched, horrified, with their parents there at their side, when it stands to reason that if they really were horrified, their parents would have hurried them away. The responsibility in these situations lies with the parents, not with the zookeepers. It was the parents who exposed the children to the scene, and not the zoo.]
Zoos also serve as conservation breeding programmes. For example, 23% of all the terrestrial vertebrate species in ISIS zoos are endangered.
[Daphne – That’s right.]
It’s also worth adding, since it hasn’t been picked up in the media, that a very recent study on all the ISIS zoo species data found that zoos are mismanaged and do not provide effective breeding programmes for many of the species that they strive to protect.
This is an important point, since it questions the validity of the arguments of zoo managers when faced with criticism on, for example, the culling of healthy captive animals.
The study was published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE (link below)
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0080311
I wish the discussion centred less around Danish parenting skills and more around the real issue here, i.e. the effective management of zoo conservation efforts.
Like letting young children watch Peppa Pig and giving ham and cheese sandwiches to take to playschool ..
Steady on, old girl. Your powers of political analysis are second to none but the same could never be said of your perspective on matters scientific, environmental and biological (and let’s not get into theological and philosophical, shall we ?). The primary objection to the needless slaying of Marius is that the zoo regarded him as nothing better than waste material – this is an alarmingly unzoo-like approach. As to the feeding of the dead animal to the lions being offered as a public spectacle – this is all very well but the fact that something happens in nature doesn’t necessarily mean that it is fit for viewing by very young children, does it ? I’m sure it wouldn’t exercise you too greatly to come up with a number of natural occurrences that you would hesitate to demonstrate to little kids.
[Daphne – I’m afraid it is your powers of comprehension that are defective, David. If you read the whole thing, rather than skimming it, you will see that I say quite clearly that the spectacle is not suitable for very young children, but that ultimately, the decision lies with their parents and not with the zoo-keepers. Little children do not go to the zoo alone. If they watched that scene, it is not because the zoo-keepers forced them to do so, but because their parents did. The world is full of unpleasant or unsuitable spectacles, but it is the parents who are the intermediaries for small children. And actually, if I may be so forward, your putting me in a box marked ‘politics’ buys into the Labour Party propaganda of me as a one-dimensional person, when the fact is that my perspective on politics is what it is precisely because I bring wider knowledge to bear on a specific field. I know some people find that hard to stomach, but there you go. It is not everybody who is poorly educated or badly informed. You need disabusing of that notion, even though – I must admit – the evidence in many of our newspapers is dispiriting.]
Daphne writes about political cookery.
[Did I get that right?]
I like it when Daphne writes about political crookery.
Daphne lifts the lid on the pot of political crookery.
I’m not an animal activist and I appreciate the necessity of the natural food chain, but I can’t condone the way the Danish zookeeper went about it. If he wanted to give those children a lesson in nature, why didn’t he try to kill the giraffe with his own hands, or better, send it alive and kicking into the lion’s den? That’s real life, that’s nature, with all the blood, gore, guts and shrieking.
[Daphne – The giraffe was not killed in public. In other words, there was absolutely no difference, in a child’s eyes, between that giraffe and one which had died of natural causes. If they found out, it was because their parents, not the zoo keepers, told them.]
It’s entirely hypocritical that this was meant to be a lesson about the the circle of life, and yet he used a gun to kill it, when that is a completely unnatural implement to kill it with. This zoo keeper wanted to give the world a show of how avant garde the Danish people are, when really the impression I’m left with is the complete opposite. I just think they are heartless hypocrites.
[Daphne – Lack of logic in arguments drives me to despair. I try to rise above it or ignore it, but I can’t. Is it really possible that people can live into adulthood with their minds completely untrained? You protest that killing an animal with a gun is ‘unnatural’ but then ignore the fact that this took place in a zoo. In other words, you protest against the ‘unnatural act’ of killing an animal with a gun while conveniently overlooking the fact that the shocked parents of these children see nothing untoward in the far more unnatural act of keeping wild animals in captivity for their delectation. Be consistent. Consistency is at the root of logic and should form the basis of every argument.]
Ultimately, this tasteless disaster is the result of trying to find a ‘middle road’ – a lesson about nature and keeping it clean. In actual fact, it wasn’t clean at all; in my opinion it verged on the scarily psychotic which is why I’m not surprised there were death threats.
[Daphne – Here again you fail deploy reason and logic. In your assessment, it is the dismemberment of a dead giraffe which is “scarily psychotic” and not the death threats issued to the zookeepers by unknown individuals. Beyond that, I still can’t work out what you’re objecting to: the dismemberment of this giraffe, or its dismemberment in public? In the course of my work, I have visited many abbattoirs and meat processing plants and I would most certainly not recommend the sights as being suitable for children of any age. Other parents, however, might feel differently. The decision is ultimately theirs, as it was at the zoo. The trouble is that when we take children to a zoo we expect it to be all about cuddly animals and still see it as a form of entertainment rather than education. But if zoos are to have any legitimacy in a civilised 21st-century society, there must be justification for them beyond entertainment of the masses, and the only possible justification for keeping wild animals in captivity is precisely the education of children and their parents. I have an absolute horror of cages and pens and do not think there is any legitimacy in zoos which do not educate to prevent more stupidity and ignorance, stupid and ignorance which includes entertaining ourselves and our children with the sight of caged and often desperate (polar bears caged in the beat with a tiny bit of water, for instance) creatures.]
That giraffe, which had a name, should never had been killed, not by a gun and neither naturally in the lion’s den. It could’ve had a vasectomy or it could’ve continued living in the unnatural environment of a zoo, which is all it ever knew, in another country where many offered to take him. Instead it was used as some sort of bureaucratic pique to boost the Danish ‘cultural advancement’. What a bunch of idiots!
[Daphne – There you go again, no logic: the giraffe should not have been killed because it had a name. Its name and identity give it special status, so its right not to be killed derives not from its status as a giraffe but from its personality. The zookeepers should have given it a vasectomy instead because that’s really natural. I agree with you that ideally it could have been shipped to another zoo, but zoos are not animal sanctuaries and they are not in the business of protecting animals from death. We forget this. Sometimes zoos are involved in saving animals from extinction by involvement in breeding programmes, but that is for environmental reasons.]
I agree, to look at there’s not much difference between an animal that has been cleanly shot in the head and one that has died naturally, say of old age. So why didn’t the zoo use one of these animals, that died naturally, of which they have an endless supply? One which preferably did not die of a sickness and therefore could still be consumed by the lions after dissection?
[Daphne – Because it was a giraffe they wanted, so as to demonstrate giraffe physiognomy. You must have missed that bit.]
My qualms are not with children seeing this demonstration, though personally I find it tasteless and would rather my children watched the story of life’s food chain on National Geographic, filmed by professionals, or better still at one of the parks in South Africa.
[Daphne – Well, yes, but unfortunately it’s not all children’s parents who can afford to take them to parks in South Africa. And television keeps things at a distance. Children who get to see animals live in zoos are that much more fortunate than children who can see them only on television.]
My qualms are with killing this perfectly healthy, pathetic animal, which had no opportunity whatsoever to defend itself, to run off or whatever. The whole show was sick and offered that poor animal zero dignity.
[Daphne – The animal was not killed in public. This can’t be repeated often enough. You are upset only because it was a giraffe. I suggest you visit the abattoir (though perhaps not, as you will not be allowed in) and see how animals are killed for your children’s table. They are perfectly healthy, pathetic in their helplessness and have no opportunity to run off or defend themselves. But they are not giraffes, so you are not upset on their behalf and serve them to your children in burgers. In doing so, you are perfectly right, but then this also means you are in no position to go on about that giraffe.]
I know someone who is involved in running a zoo and although money isn’t everything, there’s no arguing all zoos are running on ever tightening budgets. Money is a problem with keeping these businesses going (I agree with you, they are not sanctuaries).
So why couldn’t they have used the natural dead meat for this demonstration and sold that poor creature to another zoo which was offering hundreds of thousands of euro for it. Why did they remain so headstrong in their need to kill this giraffe? I have Danish friends and generally I like them. I just don’t like their zookeepers.
[Daphne – ‘Natural dead meat’. What is that, and where does it come from? Oh yes, animals that are killed for the purpose. You see, this is the problem: too many people think that meat comes from a freezer.]
Parts of the giraffe have been distributed amongst various scientific projects. The Veterinary University in Vienna received the larynx, tongue and part of the throat to contribute to a project aimed at understanding how giraffes communicate.
Apparently they don’t produce sounds audible to humans… Read more here (in German): http://www.heute.at/news/oesterreich/wien/art23652,983439
Lions do not only kill other creatures for food, they also kill their own species, for other reasons. It is not unusual for young cubs fathered by another male to be killed off by the new alpha male on the block.
No, not that simple.There are things that parents, despite their entitlement and duty to decide on their children’s behalf, simply ought not to do.
[Daphne – Oh I agree, but the point is that the decision rests ultimately with the parents, and what they ought or ought not to do is a subjective assessment, which is why on certain BBC (and other) televison broadcasts you will get that message about parental guidance, rather than a message instructing parents not to allow their children to watch the broadcast. It is only in extreme situations – porn, consumption of alcohol, etc – that the decision is taken out of the parents’ hands and it becomes illegal for parents and other adults to allow children to do certain things. Watching zookeepers dismember a dead animal and feed it to the lions does not fall within this category. In any case, far more harm is done to children by parents who don’t bring them up properly, which ends up with them being really poorly socialised and with hopeless manners and conversation, but nobody is thinking of making that illegal, as indeed they should not.]
Similarly, there are spectacles that are made available for common viewing that simply ought not to be available to everyone. In this case, it was irresponsible of the zookeeper to allow just anyone to watch and equally irresponsible of parents to allow their youngest ones (as young as two, I am reliably informed) to do so (probably to satisfy the adults’ morbid curiosity with consideration for the youngsters playing second fiddle to the primary motivation)
…. and we haven’t yet touched on zoos’ supposed roles as breeding and preservation institutions
[Daphne – I’m afraid I can’t agree with you there. The decision on whether children should be permitted to watch the dismemberment of a dead animal has to rest with parents. Anything else is undue interference by the nanny state. It is bad enough that there are children who literally do not make the link between the meat on their plate and the cow in their story-book. Children are like adults in that all of them are different, so judgements about ‘children feel this’ and ‘children feel that’ are nonsensical except in the obvious things which disturb and upset us all. As a child, I kept rabbits, as a consequence of which I first ate rabbit in my 40s. But we also kept chickens, and even a major blood-bath in the chicken-coop, which horrified me, in which one chicken was ganged up on by the rest and literally pecked to shreds, did not prevent me eating chicken regularly. The blood-bath, however, was a major lesson in social behaviour which has served me well ever since.]
In general I agree with your viewpoint about the need for children to have a real conception of how the natural world works.
Nature is primarily cruel. The suffering that goes on throughout the natural world and has gone on ever since the emergence of the nervous system is unimaginable to us modern mollycoddled humans.
That said, a zoo is not the natural world. Lions being fed through the bars of a cage is not the natural world. I admit that I am not familiar with the circumstances that led the zoo to sacrifice a giraffe for the sake of feeding the lions, but even if there were no alternative, butchering it in front of onlookers is hardly a lesson in the workings of nature.
A lion hunt where the females stalk the herd picking the weakest and cooperate to bring down the prey is a thing of beauty, notwithstanding the gore. Observing the social workings of the pride as the prey is divvied up according to social status is interesting and educational.
Watching a zookeeper kill a giraffe, butcher it and feed the pieces to a cageful of lions grown lazy and despondent from the drudgery of life in a cage is none of the above. It is a corruption of what a zoo should stand for.
[Daphne – Zoos are a perversion to begin with, so everything must start from that premiss. Also, that everything natural is good is a wrongful premiss. It is completely natural for lions to stalk and bring down a human being, but our perception of the beauty of this exercise is affected by the fact that it is a human being and not a gazelle. The identical act therefore ceases to be beautiful when its victim is different. And nobody can say that this natural act is good, either.]
I am not making any distinction between what is “good” and what is “bad”, whatever that means.
My point is that a zoo is (or should be) primarily an establishment dedicated to educating the public about animals and natural history.
As I said, butchering a giraffe and feeding it to the lions is not way whatsoever an educational activity and it is useless attempting to depict it in such a way.
I think that the zoo in question badly miscalculated by way of public relations, and PR is also one aspect of running a successful zoo.
[Daphne – On the contrary, it is most definitely an educational activity, which is why, as children at school, we had to dissect frogs and guinea pigs even though some of us kept the latter as pets. You call it butchery, but it was actually a form of dissection, which is why the zoo keeper specifically mentions the demonstration of the neck veins and heart.]
Aha. I’m sorry. I just managed to view the video. I couldn’t do so earlier because of firewall issues on the network I was logged in to so I didn’t get the dissection part.
In that case, yes I agree that it was educational and probably valuable as a learning experience to the onlookers. Giraffes are in fact very interesting animals to use as dissection specimens due to their unusually long neck. One can easily see the modifications to the basic structures of the animal arising through the process of evolution in order to support its unusual growth.
This video immediately came to my mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0
Daphne even argued that a dead animal does not bleed, because the heart stops pumping. Oh dear Daphne you are so wrong on many accounts.
Some basic physiology knowledge – once a body is dead and the heart stops pumping, blood still comes out because gravitational forces take over. A dead body is like a bag of liquid and liquid flows to the lowest point. Make an incision where the blood has pooled, and it will leak out.
Besides, the resting pressure of the circulatory system is the diastolic pressure. This is the pressure between heart beats and will not disappear immediately, even if the heart stops pumping. If you cut into an artery a little after death you may get some squirting, rather than just leaking. The instant you make an incision that pressure is released and gravitational forces will take over.
Daphne, what can I say ? STICK TO POLITICS please and don’t feed us rubbish.
[Daphne – A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, J. Mamo, and it is even more dangerous when your personal antipathy towards me, which you can’t even bring yourself to conceal, interferes with your judgement in the use of that little knowledge. In your haste at dissing me, you do not even realise that you have proved my point: that the dogs and cats had been dead for a while already when they were nailed to those pieces of wood, which is why there was no blood. Not that we need the lack of blood stains to tell us that. Anyone who has ever had to deal with a dog or cat will know that it is impossible to pin one down while it is nailed neatly and symmetrically to some wood. Most dogs need to be sedated even for a simple veterinary examination. True, they could have used a muzzle, but still…
Also, a basic lesson in blog etiquette: do not talk about the blog-host in the third person as though she is not in the room.]
A little knowledge – referring to yourself of course. I studied pathology, not you :p
[Daphne – I very much doubt it. Your manner of communication betrays you. You are not only poorly educated and irrational in your thinking, but you are also simplistic and childish, which means that you are either too young for medical training or too infantile to make it. At most, you are some sort of peculiar fetishist.]
Yes dogs and cats were probably dead before being nailed, at least that is what emerged from autopsy. That doesn’t prove they were not brutalised. In fact it does not prove anything at all and I don’t know why you put a lot of emphasy on the fact that they were dead before they were crucified.
I’ve seen videos of youtube of animals crucified alive too.
[Daphne – Refer to my comment above. You must indeed be a peculiar fetishist. What an extraordinary way to amuse yourself.]
In this case there was no blood because the MONSTER froze the poor animals after killing them. We have no idea how he killed them, neither you do. I don’t think he was very gentle with them. Sedated ? yeah pull my other one.
[Daphne – No, J. Mamo. There was no blood because they had been dead for quite a while. Freezing had nothing to do with it. The cadavers were frozen, quite obviously, to preserve them until such a time as they were needed. Or do you actually think they went out that same day to hunt down a fox terrier and a couple of cats?]
“Anyone who has ever had to deal with a dog or cat will know that it is impossible to pin one down while it is nailed neatly and symmetrically to some wood.” Bullshit – You can break all the bones of the poor animal like in this video… and them crucify them… ALIVE.
[Daphne – I have deleted the video link you posted as I consider it extremely unsavoury and your fascination with this subject even more so. What do you do for fun the rest of the time – watch snuff movies? Real life videos of women being raped and tortured? What a weirdo.]
There are other horrendous videos on youtube of animal crucifcations. I’m not going to bother to look them up. Dogs and cats are have a well developed brain and from recent studies it was found that their brain is no less developed than that of human beings. They just communicate in their own way.
[Daphne – Oh, I thought you claimed to have a scientific background?]
The monster is a monster, yes, and what he/she did is horrendous.
[Daphne – It’s most unlikely to be a woman. It’s men who do these things, and when women join in, it’s almost always to please the man and win his approval, which is no excuse but there you go.]
“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.
[Daphne – And every morning in Europe, a child wakes up and is taught that giraffes wear lacy hats and lions hold out their newborn cubs to the Sun God and call them the Lion King.]
Male lions wake up, look for a shady spot, roll over, and have a rest.
Lionesses do the hunting.
That’s where the Alpha male comes in, shoos every lioness away, and tucks in his fill. It’s only then that he – and any male lucky others in the prided – will ‘look for a shady spot, roll over’ and have a very long rest to ease the digestion.
Baxxter’s Biology For Kids:
Every morning, the amoeba wakes up. Then he becomes a father for the first time that day. Or a brother. He is confused. So confused he has split personality. So now he’s a grandfather. And his father is now his brother. Or so he thinks. So he goes looking for a girlfriend. The amoeba is very horny, which is why he reproduces all day. He finds a girlfriend. But she is his sister so she’s out of bounds. So he resorts to self-love and reproduces again and again.
By the end of the day, he has fathered a legion of bastard children. He feels happy. And gets all horny again.
Baxxter, one of my best friends in Biology 101 was an amoeba.
Finally, someone with some sense on the matter. For the life of me I cannot understand the blind-sighted panic that arises in the general population when you mention animal welfare. Normal intelligent people turn into raving fanatics when you bring up the subject.
If I can draw a parallel, in my line of work I am involved in animal research. In order to advance scientific understanding to aid medical development we, as an institution, routinely sacrifice mice, rats, gerbils, chicks and rabbits.
The secrecy and security we have to work under is ridiculous, constrains our work but is absolutely necessary. This is because we are constantly besieged by animal rights activists, through articles, flyers and even pickets, who wish to ‘liberate’ our animals. Because, of course, 500 rats are of more importance than improvements in human healthcare.
This is exactly the same type of siege the Copenhagen zoo and its workers are currently under. As far as I can gather, the zoo was over-populated with giraffes. The giraffe could not be bred, or transferred to any other institution (or individual) to breed as it had reached a certain level of inbreeding that prevented this under European law.
So the zoo could not keep it, mate it or transfer it. It could also definitely not sell it to a private individual (animal trafficking laws). What was the zoo supposed to do, set it free on the streets of Copenhagen?
The zoo-keepers did what any person in his right mind would do, humanely kill the animal and use it as feed for carnivores in the zoo.
And as for showing children, well I agree with you as well. Today we seem to want to constantly protect our children to a degree that detaches them from reality. Animals kill animals, humans kill animals, such is the circle of life. In addition this is an excellent and rare opportunity to teach children about animal biology.
As the Copenhagen Zoo mission statement declares, one of its functions is to “be actively involved in the international efforts to preserve animal species and habitats and thereby contribute to the conservation of the biodiversity.”
Carnivores held captive in zoos are usually fed goats, sheep and cows as these species are farmed and as such are not in any danger of extinction.
As more wild animal species are driven to the brink of extinction, shipping the giraffe to another zoo (and there were other zoos willing to take the giraffe) would have been the sensible thing to do. There are also a number of charities which could have taken the giraffe and moving the giraffe to a sanctuary could have been a helpful initiative to propagate the species.
[Daphne – I think you missed the bit where we were told this giraffe could not be used to propagate the species because of the risks inherent in inbreeding. In other words, it was too closely related to the other giraffes held in captivity, even in other zoos. Sending the giraffe to a sanctuary is a response to a completely different, non-environmental imperative: keeping an animal alive because we think it attractive. There is no real justification for doing that. It is pure frivolity, and while frivolity is a much-needed part of life, somebody has to pay for it, and that means choices.]
A Copenhagen Zoo spokesman stated that the The Reticulated Giraffe (whose habitat, incidentally, is in Somalia) is not an endangered species and that its genes are well represented in European zoos.
Having said that, the species still faces threats from habitat loss, poaching and hunting. We are talking about lawless Somalia after all. Unfortunately for the giraffe in question, the Copenhagen zoo only deals with ‘European Association of Zoos and Aquaria’ member zoos. So sadly, it was death by zoo bureaucracy for the poor juvenile giraffe.
[Daphne – It would be far more appropriate and fitting if you were to concern yourself with Somalian human beings, many of whom are in cages on our shores, rather than with Somalian giraffes. But as I said, frivolity is a much-needed part of life, so be as frivolous as you please.]
The Somalis’ plight is a definitely a concern, however it’s another matter entirely. The matter being debated here is the culling of the giraffe.
My point is that had the Copenhagen zoo flexed and sent the giraffe to a non-European Association of Zoos and Aquaria zoo or sanctuary, the giraffe would have been spared and it would have been allowed to reach adulthood and breed, thus propagating the species without the danger of inbreeding. Something that is much needed in today’s world of unbridled poaching and hunting.
[Daphne – This argument is going round in circles, largely because you and others are commenting without having read the available information. Part of that information is this: that giraffe could not be bred with other giraffes held in captivity in that or other zoos, because of the risks of genetic defects caused through inbreeding.]
no, tiny error here – it couldn’t be bred with other giraffes in the same zoo. Nothing was said about other zoos.
[Daphne – Wrong. Animals such as these are part of international breeding programmes, not single-zoo programmes. Time magazine: “The zoo said it had no choice but to euthanize the 2-year-old giraffe because Marius was part of an international breeding program whose bylaws prohibit inbreeding in an effort to maintain the health of the stock.”
Read more: Danish Zoo Kills Healthy Giraffe and Feeds It to Tigers | TIME.com http://world.time.com/2014/02/09/marius-giraffe-copenhagen-zoo/#ixzz2t2Ian9ly
No, Daphne, sorry but there’s more to it than that. The keeper’s comments clearly indicated that he restricted his argument to European needs whereas, in reality (even assuming that what he said was true), gene pools beyond Europe are radically different, particularly where African animals are concerned.
This guy comes across perfectly clearly – the Zoo had no use for this animal and the decision was purely utilitarian. As for the animal having a diminished quality of life were he to have been neutered, I ask you … ? where does a so-called professional get off talking such c–p ?
PS – how do you keep up with all the simultaneous posts on different topics ?
[Daphne – If it was part of the European Breeding Programme, then it was part of the European Breeding Programme. Breeding programmes are tightly controlled, as well they should be.
‘The decision was purely utilitarian’ – of course it was. It was utilitarian in the same way that the culling of herds is utilitarian. In Australia’s Northern Territory, for instance, water buffalo introduced by Europeans (the species is alien to the country) have run riot, their population exploding to huge numbers in that favourable terrain and with no predators. They are shot at from helicopters. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-05/buffalo-cull-arafura-swamp/5136436
How do I keep up with all the simultaneous posts on different topics? I’m interested in lots of things, and because that’s always been the case, I’ve built up a store of references and information. Also, I tend to remember facts that I find interesting, which makes cross-referencing easy, like this bit about the water buffalo in the Northern Territory, which I read about after a visit to a water buffalo farm (mozzarella is made from their milk) in southern Italy eight years ago, and remembered.]
Nonetheless, the water buffalo might arguably have been threatening to cause an ecological upset by dint of uncontrolled numbers (this is not necessarily correct but it is frequently the justification put forward). The giraffe, however, was posing no conceivable threat to anyone or anything – he was a perfectly healthy animal for which the zoo had no further use.
[Daphne – The buffalo were indeed doing that. However, ecological threats are not the reason we kill large numbers of pigs, cattle and domestic fowl. The reasons for killing or not killing invariably boils down to one: environmental/conservation. In other words – will the giraffe population have died out with the killing of that giraffe? No. So your environmental reason is gone immediately and then the only reason for keeping it becomes ‘because it’s sweet and it would be a shame to kill it, what a waste’. That is a completely subjective view, hence the furore. I would have kept it because it’s cute, but then I am not managing a zoo and those who manage zoos have different concerns which must perforce be pragmatic.]
Now I’m disappointed. ‘ In other words – will the giraffe population have died out with the killing of that giraffe? No. So your environmental reason is gone immediately …’.
By that argument, the one zoo in question could probably have wiped out their entire stock of giraffes, or indeed their entire animal stock, and the giraffe/animal population would still not have died out.
[Daphne – Your reasoning is false. Zoo need X numbers of animals. We are talking about an animal surplus to requirements. It is at that point – when it becomes surplus to requirements – that the argument comes into play.]
And no, I don’t cite environmental reasons as a basis for the preservation of that one unfortunate creature – the truth is that the animal was genetically redundant but otherwise healthy.
[Daphne – Again, your reasoning is false. If it is all right to kill a cow to feed a lion then it is all right to kill a surplus-to-requirements giraffe to feed a lion. Your argument is based entirely on a subjective assessment of what sort of animal you find more dispensable: the cow and not the giraffe. Therefore it is false.]
Effectively, it was taking up space and the Zoo took the most expedient approach to the problem. Zoos, however, don’t exist purely to practise eugenics on animals, as this particular keeper would have it. If this were the case, half their existing stocks, at least, would be useless and pointless.
[Daphne – I think you need to look up the word ‘eugenics’. You also need to understand that the arguments for preserving animals are almost 100% environmental and derive from their relevance and rarity, not from what you consider cuddly and appealing. When I lay down rat poison and the next day find a host of rat corpses in the garden, I am not practising eugenics. I am eliminating rats that are surplus to requirements, and I am permitted to do so because they are not in danger of extinction. If somebody were to poison a cat, the ‘animal lovers’ would be calling for his head, but poisoning rats is just fine, because they don’t like them. It is also fine for their cats to rip those rats apart, but dogs which rip a cat apart face demands that they be put down.]
Mmm ….having been involved (albeit a while ago) in the compilation of published material on the subject of eugenics, I believe I have acquired a reasonable understanding of its’ meaning. However, I don’t think our viewpoints are completely disparate – what you call surplus to requirements, I termed genetically redundant. And I use that term precisely because the keeper appears to have based his definition of requirements purely on a genetic basis ie. they had all the samples they needed of that particular gene pool. And this seems to be where the problem lies, because it is not a zoo’s exclusive remit to acquire the necessary genetic material for a networked breeding problem and then dispose arbitrarily of what they would view as genetic waste. The zoo simply had no need whatsoever of this animal (probably not enough space either), disposed of the creature in the most efficient and cheapest way possible and then proceeded to justify their actions on the basis that they had saturated their gene pool for this genotype and could not figure out what else to do with it. This smacks of many things but professionalism is not one of them
Sorry but I can NEVER EVER agree with the killing of a perfectly healthy giraffe.
It’s not about the children watching it, or about it being fed to the lion but about killing a perfectly healthy creature. They had no right to do that.
I honestly hope to god that they make good on their threats to the people responsible.
[Daphne – Perhaps it would be opportune for me to point out, Chris, that you are 1. a racist, and 2. would like to see immigrants drown before they reach Malta if they cannot stay in their own country and die there without bothering us.]
Do you eat meat, Chris Mifsud? If the answer is yes, should we send someone to kill you for paying somebody else to kill a perfectly healthy cow, chicken or fish?
@Daphne:
Not that it has anything to do with what I said, but i’m not racist and I don’t particularly like racists.
[Daphne – Oh please. You’re not racist, but every time African immigrants are rescued from the sea, you have a lot to say about that.]
@Liberal:
The killing of a perfectly healthy giraffe was completely unnecessary (I’m sure the lions at the zoo do not depend on giraffe meat) and all this being done in full public view only shows how arrogant and primitive the people responsible for it are.
The killing of a perfectly healthy giraffe was completely unnecessary, you say. But of course, you would think that the killing of another animal to feed the lions IS necessary. Would you kindly explain the rationale behind your preference of sparing the giraffe?
@Daphne
They could be African, Russian, Chinese, Indian or even American for all I care.
Anyway I’m not against them being rescued as long as it is limited to just that.
@Liberal
Well going by that reasoning you could even say it is ok for the Chinese to kill cats & dogs for food.
Starting off from the premise that animals should not be kept in a zoo, it is entirely ridiculous to kill a perfectly healthy young giraffe to avoid in-breeding. Is it possible that that is the only solution they could think of?
Personally, I don’t think it’s about children viewing the lion eating the giraffe’s body. If a person wants to teach children about animals they shouldn’t take them to a zoo anyway.
The issue, as I see it, is simply that they could have avoided killing the giraffe by transferring it somewhere else. If I’m not mistaken the Copenhagen zoo had already received an offer but they decided to shoot it and pretend to be concerned about the lion and the children learning about nature.
As far as the children are concerned, besides not taking them to the zoo, perhaps the parents could have ushered them quickly away as soon as they saw what was happening rather than letting them witness a gruesome scene and complaining afterwards?
Children or no children, the zoo could have opted for another course of action instead of killing.
You miss a very salient point, Caroline. That sparing the giraffe would have meant killing another perfectly healthy animal in order to feed the lions.
Well, what can I say?
The question of an animal’s right to life, if that right exists, has vexed me for life. But then I let myself be guided by biology, and suddenly all was light. Animals kill each other. Some even eat their own species. That’s nature. That’s biology.
If humans wanted to be close to nature, they’d put aside all moral qualms about killing and eating other species. Homo sapiens is designed that way. We are carnivores.
Yes, gratuitous killing is not on, because it unbalances nature. But then so does does medical care, or there’d still be thirty million of us, not seven point bloody five billion. So do clothes, and houses, and cars and aeroplanes and ships and alphabets and writing and the t’interwebs and this blog itself.
That is, if you think it is unnatural for Homo sapiens to have evolved this way.
Do I sound confused? Hell, even David Attenborough would.
That Danish zoo did the right thing. You’ve got to trust the Nordics to have better judgement than any of us. After all, the Danes are officially the happiest people on the planet.
Gratuitous killing is not wrong because it unbalances nature. It is wrong for moral reasons – precisely because it is gratuitous.
Unfortunately people still commit the naturalistic fallacy, that is until they need unnatural medical care.
The issue here is precisely whether the killing was gratuitous. It wasn’t.
The only animal rights issue here regards whether animals should be held captive for educational or entertainment purposes at all. And even here, there is a grey area.
While the animal rights view generally sees animal captivity as wrong, there will be exceptions, particularly when natural habitats are destroyed (although this, again brings up the issue of whether breeding programs are themselves abusive of the individual animals, but this is beyond the scope of my comment and I won’t go into it). Having said that, the animal rights view generally keeps a hands-off approach with regards to wild animals.
However – and this is the main point here – it is a fact that lions eat meat. Therefore, what difference does it make if the lions are fed “domesticated” animals or a giraffe? The question can only be raised because of the captive/protective state the lions find themselves in. In nature, the lions would tear the giraffe to shreds ALIVE. Shooting the giraffe before feeding it to the lions is actually more humane.
One could of course argue – and it has in fact been argued – that the giraffe could have been spared because other zoos were willing to take it. However, wouldn’t sparing the giraffe have meant killing another animal in its stead? So what’s the issue here? Is it just because our speciesism makes us conclude that we should spare the giraffe just because we find her more cute (or, as has been absurdly suggested, because it has a name)?
Strange how vociferously we react to other species’ death, whilst failing to notice 260 children and their parents left to drown with no help whatsoever, while our government played a game of brinkmanship with the Italian government.
That isn’t what I call ‘natural’ humane behaviour, or is it?
Do we have our heart in the right place?
A man is stabbed to death and the news item on Times of Malta gets 24 comments, most of which demonstrate gross insensitivity to the murder victim.
A giraffe gets whacked with a single bullet and fed to some hungry lions, and Times of Malta’scomments board is littered with 100 plus comments condemning the act and/or the Danes for doing it.
A woman is under arrest in the UK for allegedly neglecting her one year old baby leading to the young girl being mauled to death by a dog. Comments: zero.
I won’t even dare read the comments under this story in the Times website.
This glorification of animals into humans is a legacy left by the British.
This piece on today’s Telegraph attempts to put some sense into it all.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100259000/watching-lions-eat-a-giraffe-is-a-family-day-out/
[Daphne – ‘This glorification of animals into humans is a legacy left by the British’. You’d be best advised not to display the stupid prejudice and antipathy towards the British that negatively affected Nationalist Party thinking for years and alienated masses of people. It is thanks to the British legacy that we have not suffered the same fate as southern Italy. And it is thanks to the British legacy that we are able to communicate with the rest of the world in a language that is neither useless Maltese nor almost as useless Italian, which makes communication possible only with Italians. You would not even have this blog without that British legacy Additionally, no, the anthropomorphisation of animals on a global domination scale is not British but American. Yes, Britain had Beatrix Potter but it was Walt Disney who really did it.]
I was specifically referring to the glorification of animals into humans – I believe to have been quite clear.
With regards to anthropanthropomorphisation, I believe Lewis Carroll did it well before Walt Disney.
[Daphne – Lewis Carroll’s reach was limited to the middle classes of some parts of the Anglophone world. Aesop’s fables, mentioned here by another commenter, were also the preserve of the educationally privileged, and not even that. You’ll be hard pressed to find even just a few Maltese people of whatever background who had a copy of Aesop’s fables as a child. The response you will get from most is ‘Ace who?’ No, it was Walt Disney that did it, starting with Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck. Everybody recognises those, the world over.]
You’re giving Walt Disney way too much credit and putting an unfair weight on his shoulders.
Long before Walt Disney, there was the story of Eve being tempted by a snake, Aesop’s tales involving anthropomorphic animals, the legend of Francis of Assisi preaching to birds, Walter Potter’s hugely popular anthropomorphic taxidermy and countless others from all parts of the globe. All Walt Disney did was continue the tradition, admittedly on a massive scale.
Anthropomorphism is the result of a number of factors:
Man is a social animal. He will talk to inanimate objects if necessary. Talking to other living creatures as if they might actually reply comes naturally to people who spend a lot of time with animals. Talking to animals is simply an effort to communicate in a way which we know how.
Humans are human-centric (this is a natural survival instinct). They created a god in their own image. Naturally, they were bound to change animals into their own image as well. As far as humans are concerned, anything that’s really worthwhile has to resemble humans as much as possible.
Anthropomorphism is also a testament to humans’ creativity and ingenuity. While trying to understand the world around him, man found comparisons with and stories about animals priceless. Anthropomorphism worked as an easy understanding of the natural world as well as a source of rather marvellous entertainment, especially children’s entertainment.
The problem is not anthropomorphism in and of itself but a refusal to grow up and learn what the natural world is really like. A child raised on a farm who grows up listening to stories about talking animals will not find any difficulty drawing a line between what’s real and what’s not. Nowadays, the average child grows up in a concrete jungle where animals are as rare as hens’ teeth and slices of meat come neatly packed in cellophane covered plastic trays.
Builders of cities and food distributors are more to blame for modern people’s attitude to animals than Walt Disney ever will be, but such is the price of progress.
‘You would not even have this blog without that British legacy’.
I firmly believe we would have this blog, or blogs of this type, even without the British.
[Daphne – You miss the point, Albona. You would most certainly not have had this one. It is in English, for a start, and it reflects a mindset that is most definitely not Italian or Maltese. Also, I would have been a completely different person from a completely different background and exposed to completely different reading matter and influences. Would I have written a column or blog in Maltese? Definitely not. The language is far too limited and using it is frustrating in the extreme. A limited language that grew out of an impossibly limited situation for use by people with an extremely limited world view, 90% of whom were still illiterate a hundred years ago.]
I think that Italy must be one of the freest and most outspoken in terms of political commentaries and the widespread tendency to analyse the top dogs and hold them to account. In that respect Italy is one of the freest democracies in the world.
[Daphne – It is not. Italy is one of the least democratic states in Europe and has a very recent history of totalitarian fascism, a very long and frightening history of organised crime undermining the state, and before that, a hotchpotch under a monarchy. It has absolutely no democratic tradition at all, which is why so many Italians don’t seem to know what to do with their vote and treat it as some kind of joke with which to elect weirdos and strippers to parliament for a laugh. Yes, there are individuals who grill politicians and write fervent commentary, but they are not the mainstream. They are individuals fighting a battle in chaos. Also, Italian writing is a reflection of Italian thought processes: sentences are long-winded, complicated, and never get to the point using 10 words when they can use 50. Try translating an Italian newspaper column into idiomatic British English and you will see what I mean. Half the sentences don’t actually mean anything. They have no point or purpose. It is a reflection of the way Italians speak.]
In fact, some Italians would say that the reason they can never get a government to last longer than a few months in office is that there is too (emphasis added) much discussion.
[Daphne – No, it is because they use their vote to cock a snook at democracy. Italian culture favours the two political extremes: anarchy and totalitarianism. They have experienced both and are not quite sure which they prefer. When the rest of us in free Europe were concerned about the Big Red Ogre on the other side of the Iron Curtain and wondering whether the Berlin wall would ever come down and watching in horror as people were shot to death trying to escape to freedom, in Italy it was perfectly normal and socially desirable to be a Communist and to march with the Communist Party. My first sight of Rome, in 1976, was of a truly massive communist demo in Piazza Venezia, complete with huge banners of the hammer and sickle.]
I say let bygones be bygones. We need to take the best of the British and Italian influence whilst discarding the negative influences of both. The protection of animals is important but, as with most good things, animal protection groups are sometimes hijacked by loonies who try to elevate animals to the level of human beings.
You have made some good points, many of which I have taken on board. However, just one observation: your blog would never have been in Maltese, the reason being that the very existence of Maltese as anything remotely resembling a language is entirely down to the British who used it as: A) a means of keeping the masses ignorant; B) as a counterweight to the Italian influence and inevitable union with Italy at the time of the Risorgimento; C) to create a historical narrative linking Malta to Africa as opposed to Italy.
[Daphne – Not so. That all educated Maltese spoke Italian among themselves is entirely a myth. Those who spoke Italian did so because they were partly Italian or had strong Italian roots and familial connections. There was no earthly reason why any Maltese should or would have spoken Italian otherwise, given that Malta was never a colony of Italy and Italy had no strong presence here. We speak English because of the British presence over 160 years, and even so, relatively few Maltese do. There was a brief period when a few – very, very few – Maltese families began speaking Italian among themselves as a politico-cultural statement and nothing more. It was wholly artificial, and that’s exactly why it didn’t survive. If people really did speak Italian naturally as their mother tongue, they would still be doing so today. But they are not. Italian remains a foreign language, however well we speak it. It is a mother tongue to virtually no Maltese unless they actually do have an Italian parent. The proof of the pudding & c & c: where did all the native Maltese Italian speakers go, if we really all were speaking Italian? The native tongue of educated Maltese was always Maltese. Italian was never anything other than an affectation for a relatively brief period. If there had never been a British period and I somehow still wound up writing a blog, it would most definitely have been in Maltese because nobody in my family for the last few generations spoke Italian, but Maltese, and they were hardly uneducated, working-class or ‘rahlin’.]
Were it not for this artificial imposition, Maltese being as it was, a poor dialect much less capable of transformation into a language than other former dialects, would have remained the language of the scullery and Italian would have predominated as it has across the rest of the Italian peninsula where dialects much richer than Maltese formerly reigned supreme.
[Daphne – Maltese was never the language of the scullery. See above. The smartest families in Malta spoke Maltese as a mother tongue and still do, though they also speak English fluently and some less fluently. Italian is spoken as a learned third language. This is a historic fact. I think you will find that those families who spoke Italian at home did so during a very particular period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and that they supported the Nationalist Party and were making a political statement. If Italian were truly their mother tongue, they would still be speaking it. We don’t change our mother tongue depending on the situation; we keep passing it on down the generations.]
I highly doubt people would have been too bothered if a zoo decided to destroy Frankie the Partula Snail or Giorgos the Corfu killifish – who cares about such ‘ugly’ animals.
http://themaltingpot.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/of-breeding-programmes-and-danish-giraffes/
Apparently the zoo turned down a private offer of half a million euros for the giraffe. That doesn’t really sound like a good business for the zoo. It seems they wanted to kill the giraffe no matter what, and that explains the people’s outrage.
[Daphne – You’ve taken on the Muscat way of thinking. Who was the offer from, and why did they want the giraffe? Zoos can’t just sell giraffes, no matter the price.]
No I’m not. Many zoos struggle to make ends meet and I just wanted to drive that point home. As I said, the bidder was private and if one could afford half a million euro for a giraffe my guess is that he has the right environment to keep it.
[Daphne – Zoos are not permitted to sell animals on the private market.]
The giraffe, once dead, is just meat. I know no details of this feeding case but what I do know is that they did not put out a full animal carcass but rather an animal which was first quartered and further dissected to show the public the process, presumably for scientific reasons.
Hence, the giraffe would hardly have been recognisable as such, and in any case, I can’t for the life of me see how pieces of beef or pork would be any different other than the fact that a giraffe is cute in the eyes of most and beef and pork is seen as food.
On that note, I have always found the ‘dolphin safe’ label an utter stupidity due to the fact that the only reason people do not want dolphins killed is the cuteness factor.
[Daphne – Actually, no. It’s for environmental reasons, not cuteness. Dolphins are threatened in many seas, especially the Mediterranean.]
You never see labels for ‘xxx fish safe’ so the whole concern about dolphins is mostly based on emotive issues. I don’t doubt that humans have a kind of link to dolphins as they do to dogs but still, c’mon.
Lastly, I find it rather odd that often the people who are in favour of euthanasia (even in circumstances where the elderly or sick are coerced into it by selfish relatives), abortion in cases of disabilities and abortion on demand up to nine months as is the case in some jurisdictions, are the same people who will froth at the mouth at the sight of a giraffe being fed to lions or a bunny wabbit being killed.
Very few dolphin species are threatened. There are species of pig or cow that are at risk of extinction. I have never seen a can of corned beef with the ‘no pig’ stamp of approval.
Granted, if they used the stamp ‘no xxx type of dolphin’ for an endangered species of dolphin it’d be fine.
‘Dolphin free’ is just symbolism for the same kind of people who were horrified to see a lion eat a giraffe.
I knew you’d be the only one who would speak sense about this whole Copenhagen zoo thing. Animals kill each other to stay alive – if they didn’t, there would simply be no more animals (well, carnivorous ones at least).
Why do people find this so hard to understand?
If a lion tears a zebra to shreds for food it’s fine, but if a human kills a giraffe and uses it to feed the lion, then everyone gets their tits in a twist.
Once in zoo in the UK I saw a sign warning people not to eat monkey meat. How can one justify such blatant animal ‘favouritism’?
[Daphne – The problem with monkey meat is not animal favouritism, but disease and smuggling. http://www.bushmeat.org/bushmeat_and_wildlife_trade/key_issues/wildlife_and_human_health ]
@Ian
If the lions & the giraffe where in the wild and there was NO human intervention then I would have had nothing against it.
But in this case neither the lions nor the giraffe where in the wild. The lions did not kill the giraffe, humans did.
The lions at the zoo are fed whatever they are fed and certainly do not depend on humans killing a perfectly healthy and beautiful giraffe and ripping it up to pieces in order to eat.
Please make an effort to realise that you’re not making any sense.
You say that you have no problem with lions killing giraffes in the wild, but disapprove of feeding a giraffe to lions in a zoo because lions in zoos do not depend on humans killing a perfectly healthy and beautiful giraffe and ripping it to pieces in order to eat.
First off, I hope you realise that beauty is no justified criterion for deserving to live (although I wouldn’t be surprised if you disagreed).
Secondly, I hope you realise that because they have no opportunity to hunt, lions in zoos do depend on humans killing perfectly healthy animals to feed them in order to live.
Thirdly – and I know this is becoming absurd but apparently it needs to be said – lions cannot swallow giraffes or other animals whole, so the animal, no matter what species, HAS TO be ripped up in pieces in order to be digested.
If you don’t understand this, I give up.
@Liberal
“because they have no opportunity to hunt, lions in zoos do depend on humans killing perfectly healthy animals to feed them in order to live.”
I doubt all the zoo’s in the world kill giraffes whenever it is feeding time for the lions.
“lions cannot swallow giraffes or other animals whole, so the animal, no matter what species, HAS TO be ripped up in pieces in order to be digested.”
The lions don’t need humans with saws to cut their food for them. I’m sure they are very capable of doing it themselves.
Excuse my late comment, but I missed this post.
This is the reason why I like to come to this site. Although during the past months, most of the news was worrying, it is always delivered logically, responsibly and most of all, in a sane way.
After reading this, I had my moment of relief again. We humans are so cut off from all that is natural, including natural sciences that we cannot comprehend nature anymore. Living in harmony with animals has become suddenly not enough, we are considering them as relatives instead of companions, survival tools, food and sometimes also a danger.
Today people are taking the place of what an animal could be to a man. We work immigrants as though they are mules. We consider their refuge as a pest nest and or some den. Now we already have our first slaughter. This behaviour is the real shocking story.
I have 2 small dogs and a cat. To me they are my family and I would choose their lives over anything. They sleep in my bed and i’ll always give them food from my own (if it is good for them).
I also love them more than I do most relatives bar my immediate family and would do anything for them.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/12/second-giraffe-marius-risk-denmark-zoo
This is what some of you are defending ?
The people ‘responsible’ for this Danish zoo should be shot, cut up to little pieces and fed to the lions.
Pure disgusting and sickening arrogance. I wouldn’t even spit on them if they were on fire.
This is one of those almost non-existent times when I honestly feel pure hate for someone.
Thank you and bravo! Why do uninformed people not feel shame and embarrassment? When did uninformed people decide to impose their ignorance on everyone else?
These attitudes of anthropomorphism are permeating the culture suddenly.
Corporatization and urbanization have detached people from food production and fostered an artificial attitude of entitlement.
The moral self righteousness of feelgood advocacy allows lazy people to feel like they know better without having to go to the trouble of actually reading books. I had no idea there were so many experts on zoo management.