Farvel, Marius

If you were alive at all on Twitter yesterday, you could not escape photos of Marius, the young giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo.

Zoo management considered Marius surplus to requirements in terms of his genetic structure (already represented in the zoo’s population) and space at the facility. So on Sunday, they did as they’d announced earlier: they killed Marius, dismembered his corpse and fed him to the lions.

Oh—they did it publicly, in front of zoo visitors. Just like an old-fashioned public execution.

(No, I'm not showing or linking to them. You want to see them, you can Google for yourself.)

I’ve got to say that I stick at some of the images; zoo officials called it educational, but I’m not sure that the kids got the lesson they intended.

Marius was apparently a victim of EU regulations—the laws under which the Copenhagen Zoo operates prohibit transfer of animals outside of the organization of zoos it belongs to. So even though other zoos offered to take him, Copenhagen turned them down.

There were apparently private would-be buyers, too; but I don’t want to think about what some of those people wanted with a beautiful young animal already written off by those who are supposed to look out for him. Copenhagen refused them as well.

Both NPR and CNN refer to Marius’ end as “euthanizing”, which is bizarre. Euthanasia is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering. Marius was 18 months old, perfectly healthy and could have lived a long and happy giraffe life for another 24 years or so. The pain that was being ended was to Copenhagen Zoo’s finances and their breeding program.

I’ll confess that zoos make me uneasy. I outright loathe circuses—the idea of wild animals capering about to entertain humans makes me retch. But when I think about zoos I can’t help but feel that the wrong species are behind the bars.

A few months ago I exchanged such thoughts with a guy on Twitter. (And, BTW—steeplechase? No.) I had mild reservations about zoos being completely pernicious precisely because of their animal conservation programs. You know, they were ensuring the continuation of animals under assault from human civilization.

And then came Marius.

it’s interesting to me that the Copenhagen Zoo didn’t foresee the vehement reaction from around the world. I also think it’s passing strange that, with the population of giraffes in Africa declining, zoo breeding programs aren’t capable of offloading their “surplus” back into the wild instead of slaughtering them for a Sunday outing.