Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

Shutterstock/Ruslan Guzov

A Danish zoo is planning to dissect a lion in front of children

The animal was put down nine months ago because the zoo had too many lions.

A DANISH ZOO has said it plans to dissect a lion in front of children, undeterred by the international outrage that hit a Copenhagen zoo that last year did the same thing to a giraffe.

“The reason we are dissecting it is that we believe there is a lot of education involved in dissecting a lion,” Michael Wallberg Sorensen, a zookeeper at the Odense Zoo in central Denmark, told AFP.

The animal was put down nine months ago because the zoo had too many lions and it has since been kept in a freezer.

It will be dissected on Thursday next week, to coincide with Denmark’s autumn school break, in front of a crowd that is expected to include children as well as adults.

“Although we are in contact with a lot of other zoos and try to relocate them, we can get a surplus,” Sorensen said, explaining the reason why it was put down.

The zoo has performed public dissections of lions in the past without prompting any negative reactions, he added.

Visitors are mostly “really interested in it and find it interesting to see a lion that up close,” he said.

Bristol Zoo File image. David Davies David Davies

A Copenhagen zoo prompted a storm of criticism in February last year for putting down a healthy giraffe and dissecting it in front of children.

The zoo’s scientific director received death threats after Marius, a healthy 18-month-old giraffe, was put down despite numerous offers for him to be rehoused and thousands signing an online petition to save him.

After the dissection the animal’s meat was fed to lions.

In Denmark, where farming is an important part of the economy, schoolchildren sometimes visit slaughterhouses on tours that include watching pigs on the slaughter line.

Many Danes were surprised and even angered by what has been dubbed Marius-gate, and the Copenhagen Zoo’s scientific director Bengt Holst was among those decrying the “Disney story” shaping many people’s view of zoo creatures.

- © AFP, 2015

Read: Facebook has apologised for banning an ‘overly sexual’ breast check ad

Read: Suspects in Tantric sex guru death now accused of killing woman in San Francisco

Author
View 22 comments
Close
22 Comments
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute IrishGravyTrain
    Favourite IrishGravyTrain
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 10:11 AM

    More educational and practical then bible studies.

    170
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Uncle Denise
    Favourite Uncle Denise
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 10:12 AM

    I wonder if they’ll find any of the giraffe inside the lion and they can re-dissect it all over again?

    101
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Saul Goodman
    Favourite Saul Goodman
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 10:34 AM

    Denmark has over 10 million people in a country nearly half the size of Ireland. One day there might be too many Danish living in Denmark, are they going to kill them to maintain the same population, once you have no more space to build?

    91
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute IrishGravyTrain
    Favourite IrishGravyTrain
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 10:49 AM

    FFS. Get a grip.

    52
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Mark Andrew Salmon
    Favourite Mark Andrew Salmon
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 11:27 AM

    5.614 million you plonker!

    45
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paul Fahey
    Favourite Paul Fahey
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 10:19 AM

    I would be happy for my two eldest children to attend, very educational.

    86
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Vocal Outrage
    Favourite Vocal Outrage
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 10:37 AM

    There are TV programmes showing the dissection of various animals and how they have evolved and adapted to their environment. I think it’s very educational. Children need to learn about the natural world and this is one of the best ways

    76
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Little Diddy No
    Favourite Little Diddy No
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 11:46 AM

    A reminder, as if one were needed, that no matter how much they pretend, zoos do NOT exist for the conservation of animals – only a tiny percentage of the animals in most zoos are threatened in the wild – and the same goes for Dublin Zoo. They are places where you can go and see animals in captivity, robbed of their natural environment, living empty and stressful lives.

    52
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Jake Race
    Favourite Jake Race
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 11:23 AM

    It’s called science, if you were educated in Catholic Ireland you wouldn’t understand.

    49
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Ciaran OHalloran
    Favourite Ciaran OHalloran
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 11:30 AM

    Sci-ence? was he one of the apostles?

    41
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Michael Sands
    Favourite Michael Sands
    Report
    Oct 11th 2015, 3:32 AM

    No, it is called publicity…

    1
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Conor Mac Manus
    Favourite Conor Mac Manus
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 10:22 AM

    It takes guts.

    38
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Karen
    Favourite Karen
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 1:30 PM

    Disgusting. So instead of putting said lion in a place like safari park somewhere which i am sure loads of places would have loved to have received such a beautiful animal they killed it. Denmark has been doing alot of animal murders of late. Dont believe i will ever venture to that country.

    33
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Jamsey
    Favourite Jamsey
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 1:35 PM

    If you thought about what you were saying for a second you might realise that “the wild” is not all its cracked up to be.The chances of injury,starvation or becoming something else’s lunch are pretty high out there. I’ve had to put down injured animals in the wild to stop the big cats treating them apart.

    9
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Jamsey
    Favourite Jamsey
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 1:41 PM

    Sorry Karen that was ment for someone else, not you..

    2
    See 2 more replies ▾
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Anita OGalligan
    Favourite Anita OGalligan
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 2:09 PM

    Absolutely agree with Karen. How barbaric can a country get. I’m sure that somewhere like Longleat or similar
    Could have taken these poor animals. Now I know the mentality of one man who threatened to poison any
    Cat whom he saw wandering a certain estate where I spend a lot of my time in another country, This guy was
    Danish. I NEVER wish to go to Denmark.

    17
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Dennis Collins
    Favourite Dennis Collins
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 3:54 PM

    One Danish guy willing to poison cats and you suddenly never want to visit that country, and in the process have branded 5.6 million people. There are farmers the length and breadth of this island who would shoot rabbits and crows, and poison the few eagles we have, yet you live here.

    There are arseholes everywhere. You’ll live a very isolated life if you decide to avoid the countries that they live in.

    12
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paul Wallace
    Favourite Paul Wallace
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 2:02 PM

    Can we do this to some of our TD’s

    26
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Davy Boy
    Favourite Davy Boy
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 11:01 AM

    Not much in it for the lion

    17
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute North Korean General
    Favourite North Korean General
    Report
    Oct 10th 2015, 11:40 AM

    Animals

    9
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Ally Sommer
    Favourite Ally Sommer
    Report
    Oct 11th 2015, 6:57 AM

    Very educational, the kids are not bothered by it at all. They ask loads of questions, lifecycle is explained and they’re informed that the meat is given to the other animals in the zoo. Makes them understand too that the meat in the butchers and supermarkets is not handed down by the fairies :-)

    2
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Michael Sands
    Favourite Michael Sands
    Report
    Oct 11th 2015, 3:31 AM

    One way to make headlines, Zoos killing animals to make money… That is what this is, really…
    They might get more of a crowd if they did that to those who run the zoo?

    2
Submit a report
Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines.
Thank you for the feedback
Your feedback has been sent to our team for review.
JournalTv
News in 60 seconds