Zoos fool themselves when they claim to be anything other than places of entertainment for the general public. They pretend at playing the saviour of endangered species but really do little more than force some individuals of an unsuccessful species to live a fairly useless life in totally artificial surroundings. It is my contention that “Conservation” is on the wrong track in trying to freeze species in to a mould that clearly is genetically a failure. If the goal is to help a species to survive then they have to be helped genetically to live alongside humans – and not in some artificially created environment which can never exist outside the zoo.
And there is something wrong when perfectly healthy specimens are bred and then put down because they don’t suit. Copenhagen Zoo is probably not the worst zoo in the world, but it is among those who pretend the most. After Marius the giraffe they have now culled two lion cubs and two adult lions as being surplus to requirements. They are probably the same lions which feasted on Marius!
The Guardian: A Danish zoo that prompted international outrage by putting down a healthy giraffe and dissecting it in public has killed two lions and their two cubs to make way for a new male.
“Because of the pride of lions’ natural structure and behaviour, the zoo has had to euthanise the two old lions and two young lions who were not old enough to fend for themselves,” Copenhagen zoo said.
The 10-month-old lions would have been killed by the new male lion “as soon as he got the chance”, it said. The four lions were put down on Monday after the zoo failed to find a new home for them, a spokesman said. All four were from the same family.
He said there would be no public dissection of the animals since “not all our animals are dissected in front of an audience”.
Tags: Copenhagen Zoo, culling lions, genetic adaptation, Marius the giraffe
The k2p blog 
March 25, 2014 at 9:08 pm
Zoos serve conservational value by allowing members of the public to get up close to the creatures conservationists want them to care about. It’s about engaging the public so that they can but a face to the plight of natural extinctions. Zoos also provide us with some safeguards against the loss of wild species. For example, populations of amphibians wiped out by the amphibian chytrid fungus can potentially be replaced by animals bred in zoos and similar facilities. Zoos are by no means an alternative to allowing these animals to exist in their natural habitats, but hopefully they can inspire the general public to help fund projects that protect the habitats that these animals so desperately need in the wild. The death of Mariusz is difficult for some people to deal with, but sadly the outrage at the death of this one animal seems to be greater than the outrage expressed at the obliteration of entire species in the wild.
March 25, 2014 at 9:15 pm
Zoos do nothing for the survival of a species except in an environmental landscape that doesn’t exist. They “freeze” the “conserved” species in a pattern that cannot survive – into a failed pattern. If species are to be helped to survive then they have to be helped in the genetic adaptation that they themselves have failed at. Merely “freezing” the failed pattern is then creating a museum of genetic failures. Pointless.
March 26, 2014 at 12:36 am
Unfortunately genetic factors alone cannot counteract the greatest threats to the most endangered species on this planet. Habitat loss for example cannot be remedied genetically. To return to the chytrid fungus, zoos are actually breeding certain species of frogs and deliberately releasing them into infected habitats in an effort to accelerate evolutionary resistance to the fungus, so in some cases we actually can facilitate genetic adaptations to survival threats. We couldn’t do this without the help of zoos and similar institutions.
March 26, 2014 at 3:09 am
We need zoos?..BIG ZOOS ?