By Juliana McLeod, News Staff
On Feb. 9, a giraffe was killed. More importantly, a baby giraffe was killed publicly with a bolt gun in the Copenhagen Zoo.
To say the event sparked outrage would be understatement. I as well was upset when I first heard this, but as is often the case with mass outrage, I realized the issue is more complex than it first appeared and I am not the best one to judge the situation.
Before the giraffe, Marius, fell to his grave, there was an online petition signed by thousands of people to halt the planned execution. It did not work.
Marius was indeed killed and later dismembered in front of an audience before being fed to the zoo’s lions.
When I first found out about this, I was reading a Buzzfeed article and attempting to disregard every word I was reading. In a world where baby animals are adored and cherished, I did not believe a zoo would actually kill one.
But a quick look online proved me wrong. That was indeed what had happened, igniting a flame of anger in me over the inhumanness and atrocity of the execution. I refused to believe someone could take the life of an animal like that.
The Copenhagen Zoo explained that the execution occurred to avoid inbreeding. Then why not ensure Marius was not bred with a female giraffe, rather than killing him?
Lesley Dickie, the executive director of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, gave light to the issue of space. Zoos cannot take in an infinite number of animals and guarantee their safety. After a point, the animals that are not absolutely needed are better off dead than scrounging for space and food.
But why shoot the animal when lethal injection was a possibility? The zoo knew that Marius’s body would be the lions’ next meal, and a lethal injection in the corpse would not fare well for the diners.
We could continue to ask question after question, sorting our way through this controversy. But the reason for our anger is still up in the air. Our anger could be leaned toward the possibility of other zoos supposedly taking in Marius. Or our anger is centered on Marius’ infancy.
Personally, I am torn between what to think. A part of me remembers that, though animals deserve to be treated fairly, they do not have the knowledge of the future that humans do. On his deathbed, Marius did not wonder about the promotion he never received or think teary-eyed of how he never had the chance to father baby giraffes.
But then I see the photos circling the Internet, depicting Marius’s limp body being cut into pieces and another of the giraffe’s leg mid-swallow in a lion’s mouth. Those photos make me squirm, especially when I think of how the dismemberment occurred in front of children.
But something stopped me.
Dickie explained that there might be a misconception of what is considered “normal in Danish culture.” Who are we to say that this is wrong in Denmark if it is an accepted practice? After all, if families were eager to witness the dismembering of the giraffe, perhaps that is a cultural predilection.
This is the point at which I stopped thinking I knew best about the situation. It is so easy to hear about controversial news and believe that your opinion is the intelligent one, especially when thousands of others agree with you.
My opinion is an uneducated one. I am not a zookeeper, nor have I ever worked with animals. I have never had to make the decision of how to save space in a zoo or had to determine the best solution to prevent inbreeding.
I have never even lived in Denmark.
On Feb. 9, a giraffe was killed. More importantly, it was the zoo’s decision, not mine.
-Juliana McLeod can be reached at [email protected].
