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Doe-eyed Marius is unaware he is facing destruction due to European rules designed to avoid in-breeding.Animal rights campaigners in Denmark are trying to save a healthy young giraffe at Copenhagen Zoo from being destroyed. The zoo says it cannot keep the animal, named Marius, because of European rules to avoid in-breeding, and that attempts to find it a new home have failed. Copenhagen Zoo says it needs to kill the giraffe before it becomes an adult and attempts to mate.Campaigners say to do so would be barbaric.Marius - a doe-eyed, perfectly healthy, 18-month-old giraffe - has been munching in his stall, blissfully unaware that he is about to face his executioner on Sunday, says the BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Copenhagen.
QuoteEuropean rules designed to avoid in-breeding... Copenhagen Zoo says it needs to kill the giraffe before it becomes an adult and attempts to mate.Campaigners say to do so would be barbaric. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26098935
European rules designed to avoid in-breeding... Copenhagen Zoo says it needs to kill the giraffe before it becomes an adult and attempts to mate.Campaigners say to do so would be barbaric.
Late last year I had to castrate an animal……it was a giraffe.
A bid to save a young giraffe from destruction at Copenhagen Zoo has failed, and the giraffe was put down on Sunday morning.The UK's Yorkshire Wildlife Park - which has a state-of-the-art giraffe house and the capacity for an extra male - was among several zoos which put in a last-ditch offers to take Marius. It said it was "saddened" by the killing of the animal.Stine Jensen, from Denmark's Organisation Against the Suffering of Animals, said the situation "should not have occurred"."It just shows that the zoo is in fact not the ethical institution that it wants to portray itself as being, because here you have a waste product - that being Marius."Here we have a zoo which thinks that putting this giraffe down instead of thinking of alternatives is the best option," she said.But Bengt Holst, scientific director at the Danish zoo, defended Marius's destruction, saying that giraffes had to be selected to ensure the best genes were passed down to ensure the animal's long-term survival.He told the BBC it was a responsible practice on the part of zoos to manage their animal populations to ensure they remained healthy, with some 20-30 animals put down at Copenhagen Zoo in a typical year... The campaign to save him, he said, had gone "much too far".Animal rights campaigners have described the move as barbaric and have accused the zoo of being unethical.The director of a wildlife park in the Netherlands, Robert Krijuff, whose last-minute offer of a place was also rejected, said: "I can't believe it. We offered to save his life. Zoos need to change the way they do business."
In the chilly dawn of Sunday morning a healthy young giraffe in a Danish zoo was given its favourite meal of rye bread by a keeper – and then shot in the head by a vet.The death of Marius, an 18-month-old giraffe considered useless for breeding because his genes were too common, was followed by his dissection in front of a large crowd, including fascinated-looking children, prompting outrage and protests around the world.The controversy was fed further by startling images and video of the process, including a picture of a large chunk of meat with an unmistakably spotty hide being fed to the lions.When a storm of protest broke over the news that the giraffe was to be killed... the zoo posted a detailed justification on its website.The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, which monitors international standards and of which Copenhagen is a member, said it fully supported the decision of the zoo.
David Williams-Mitchell, of Eaza, said: “There are habitats which are disappearing and zoos are the last line of resistance in building captive populations… But in order for the captive populations to be viable, in-breeding must be avoided."Mark Jones, a vet and executive director of the British office of the Humane Society International, said: “The fact of the matter is that it is the young animals that help zoos to draw in the crowds and zoos are finding that when they reach maturity there is no space for them and no market for them in other zoos.”
Animals in zoos often go insane from the frustration of life in captivity, and visitors leave without having learned anything meaningful about animals' natural behaviour, intelligence or beauty. There is nothing dignified or inspiring about seeing bored and depressed animals. In the wild, gorillas don't eat their own sick and pull out their hair in frustration. Free polar bears don't pace back and forth constantly on concrete. The typical behaviour of captive animals, such as bar-biting, self-mutilation, pacing and rocking, is unheard of among their free relatives.We wouldn't go to a prison to learn about typical human society, so it makes no sense to observe imprisoned animals in order to learn about them. Today, we have IMAX movies and entire television channels dedicated to showing wildlife documentaries, which serve as virtual field trips and teach generations of children about animals without harming them. We no longer have any excuse for keeping intelligent social animals incarcerated and denying them everything that's natural and important to them.From the moment he was born, Marius was destined to lead a life of misery at the hands of his human captors. Giraffes rarely die of old age in captivity. Had he not been killed yesterday, he would have spent his short life as an exhibit, stranded in a cold climate, thousands of miles away from his true home. Although his death is heartbreaking, it's his birth that should have been prevented.
Zoos in Europe ‘kill 5,000 healthy animals a year’Revelation comes in wake of controversy over healthy giraffe put down in CopenhagenHowever, some zoos, such as Twycross in Warwickshire, have a policy of not putting down healthy animals.Dr Lesley Dickie, executive director of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (Eaza), told BBC Radio 4’s The Report that between 3,000 and 5,000 healthy animals are put down every year across Europe. “That’s our estimate for all animals management euthanised in the zoo, be it tadpoles up until a giraffe,” she said.She added that “less than a few hundred” larger animals such as giraffes, zebras, lions and bears were included in the total.
Heart-breaking pictures have emerged of the moment a giraffe said goodbye to a terminally ill zoo worker, who had spent most of his adult life cleaning the animal's enclosures.Maintenance worker Mario has terminal cancer and had asked to be taken into the giraffe enclosure at Rotterdam’s Diergaarde Blijdorp zoo.The 54-year-old was wheeled into the enclosure on his hospital bed. Within minutes, the giraffes approached him and began to nuzzle and kiss him.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/police-hunt-sao-paolo-thieves-who-stole-47st-lion-rawell-from-an-animal-sanctuary-9320720.html