If you'd like to see a picture of lions devouring the carcass of a giraffe, go here.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) The Copenhagen Zoo killed Marius, its 2-year-old giraffe, and fed its remains to lions on Sunday, ignoring a petition signed by thousands of people and offers from other zoos and a private individual to save the animal, officials said.
The zoo said it acted to avoid inbreeding among its giraffes in keeping with recommendations by a European association.
Marius, a healthy male, was put down using a bolt pistol, said zoo spokesman Tobias Stenbaek Bro. Visitors, including children, were invited to watch while the giraffe was then skinned and fed to the lions.
Why was this particular giraffe sacrified to the lions? Was it sick? Disabled? Vicious? In Agony? Not exactly.
((Because the)) European Association of Zoos and Aquaria ((stated)) there already were a lot of giraffes with similar genes in the organization's breeding program.
Other zoos had offered to take the giraffe, and one private individual offered the zoo $680,000 to purchase Marius instead of having the giraffe shot. But
... the zoos don't own the animals themselves, but govern them, and therefore can't sell them to anyone outside the organization that doesn't follow the same set of rules.
So the rules say you can shoot a giraffe for no reason other than a few "wrong" bits of DNA, but you can't let some other entity keep it alive. Those are some rules. My opinion, here's what you do when the rules get in the way of common sense and decency:
Fuck the rules!
Now that's something to teach your children.