Denmark: lion killed in zoo and dissected for public viewing

A Copenhagen zoo also prompted criticism previous year for putting down a healthy giraffe and cutting it up in public. “And then you have what is called inbreeding”, she was quoted as saying by The Local.

The dissection took place outside of the view of general zoo visitors, and is part of the tradition of the zoo, which has done public dissections for two decades.

Children watched on as a lion was publicly dissected at a highly-controversial zoo.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’s (PETA) associate director, Elisa Allen, said: “Are Danish zoos trying to offend everyone who has ever thought of wildlife as more than an interesting exhibit to deprive of a natural life and then a body to deprive of a respectful burial?”

“The nine-month-old lion was one of three that Odense Zoo, in central Denmark, euthanized earlier this year after “numerous attempts to find another institution of similar high welfare standards to take it were unsuccessful”, according to a statement from the zoo”. The dissection was intentionally scheduled for a school holiday so children could attend.

This is not the first time that the Odense Zoo has been criticized. Last year, the Copenhagen Zoo killed a healthy giraffe named Marius and fed it to the lions despite more than 200,000 signatures in an online petition, and offers of more than half a million euros to save the animal.

Tranberg and Kolind later tried to recreate a lion’s roar by blowing into a tube they had inserted into the dead animal’s neck.

The cub was killed in February because her genes were common in Europe. The remains of the two siblings – another male and a female – are still in a zoo freezer, and officials have not decided what to do with them, said Jens Odgaard Olsson, manager of the zoo.

Tranberg talked about the lives of big cats before cutting up the stiff carcass of the lion.

Disgusting images showed the severed head of the young lion being held up to the audience, while employees take a knife to the cub’s organs.

“I am now embarrassed to admit that my great grandmother was 100 percent Danish after hearing of your plans to slaughter animals”, Laura O’Hara from the United States town of Fairfax wrote on the zoo’sFacebook page. The zoo declined to say whether she had been given a name.

“We believe in sharing knowledge”, he told the Associated Press, adding that years ago, European cities all hosted public dissections of humans and animals for the goal of medical advancement. Denmark’s Funen Village open-air museum dissected a pig on Wednesday for a group of children.