Denmark zoo asks people to donate unwanted pets

[Lafone]

Sorry I think I didn't make myself clear and I'm mixing what I want to say... My point is that I don't see the difference between feeding a livestock or a pet as they are still both animals that will get kill to feed some carnivore, if we have problems with some animals getting kill to feed carnivores maybe we just shouldn't have carnivores in captivity? Now as I said this part is just my personal opinion, not related at all with whatever the "zoo" thinks and wants.

On the other hand the zoo is really avoiding to ask for "pets" and focus on receiving just some livestock and I agree it is expected people might donate their unwanted pets because of the species they are willing to take but if that happens why should the zoo be blame? As I said they are very clear with what will happen with the animals once they reach there, they are not hiding anything contrary to what some rescue centers or even other zoos do. I don't think this will contribute to anything as if someone is actually willing to bring the guinea pig or rabbit they had in their house even knowing that animal is gonna get kill to feed the lynx then I guess they probably didn't even consider that animal as their pet in the first place

I agree completely with you that it doesn't make a difference at the zoo. I just think it really matters when people are careless / thoughtless in pet ownership and that more my objection to it than what the zoo were doing.

 

[Mickey]

True, but rabbits and guinea pigs are more pets than livestock

Depends on the culture and point of view: if you go to Peru you'll find roasted cavies as food items, and, without going too far, not every European Country sees rabbits as a pet or has different breeds for company and production, or even in the same region there may be different mentalities: a farmer may see a rabbit as livestock and a city person may see it as a pet.

Nonetheless this all comes down to human affection and egoism: humans are all empathic to different degrees and we can extend that empathy beyond our species, even to inanimate entities.
As such, we like to keep close these species and even have physical contact with them as such is the way most of us are taught to express affection; but any down-to-earth person knows that living beings do not live just on affection and one has to manage both the living being and its own emotions, due to most species expressing emotions and reacting to them in different ways.
However, even though a relationship with another living being can be beneficiary to both and, if one's sentiments are true, they only want the best for the other entity, it is born from a sense of selfishness in the pursuit of happiness and wellbeing.

Do I want an animal for co-habitation and physical contact, as that is the way I express my best emotions? Then what I find as a companion animal (and its species or likeness) I will, from that point on, associate to my affections and protection; but not everyone understands the differences and needs of the other animal in what multiple times I saw as a display of selfish happiness: just to name an example, unresponsible owners of dogs and cats.

Do I want an animal to observe, preserve or exhibit it as means to "protect" it and keep within my vicinity, as that is the way I express my best emotions? Then I will do what is in my power to keep it alive and, in good cases, also give it an active and, as much as one can, enthusiastic life (it is a poetic adjective in this case, the concrete term would be a life in which the 5 freedoms are respected and followed), but same point of selsfish happiness applies.

Things do not always coincide, what is happiness for me may not be for another animal and vice versa, and there is a bigger picture and collectivity to take into consideration.

A case example: a person that loves dogs and grew up loving dogs will do everything they can to take care of them by feeding, sheltering, moving and caress them.
The dog is a carnivore, so by nature it needs to feed on someone else in order to live and stay well: someone must die for the dog to be healthy and happy, some animal that could be a farmer's favorite, that is someone's offsping.
The dog is social and needs company, but is also hierarchical, so someone needs to be a subordinate of the dog, possibly being repressed, not expressing the full extent of their happiness or, in alternative, subordinate the dog making it not express its true emotions.

All in all, what I'm trying to say is, as other pointed out: making the best out of everything and consider the whole picture, rather than point fingers and, as an italian saying goes, lookig for the hair in the egg.

 

[StoppableSan]

From a PR perspective... what did they think was gonna happen? Like, we can all wax eloquent about different practices in different countries, but the way international news is reporting on this, you'd think Aalborg Zoo was committing crimes against nature. Even if people just go off the headlines, that's enough to open the anti-zoo can of worms all over again, *on top of* Tiergarten Nürnberg euthanizing twelve of their baboons before feeding them to their carnivores. Animal management is a multifaceted field that should be communicated to the general public with grace and nuance rather than ham-handedness, especially since communication is a two-way street. I'm sure Aalborg did their best to explicitly communicate what they meant in a similar way that Nürnberg has an FAQs page about their baboons and how they actually *did* look for other homes but never got a reply. That being said, for-profit news organizations only highlight nuance if you actually read the article rather than going off of headlines or clickbait alone.

To quote James Rolfe, "what were they thinking?"

 

[MarkinTex]

One of the reasons they won't ask for dogs and cats is that the public would probably expect them to be euthanised in the same way they would be at the vets; via an overdose of appropriate sedative drugs. But that cannot happen as the drugs can't go into food (hence the note on exclusion for donation for any animal under vet treatment).

So they would have to strangle the dogs and cats, break their necks using extension ropes like rabbits, or gas them / use an electric stun plate or hanging device to stun them then stick them to bleed them out. Of course they are alive at that point.

The keepers might not fancy doing it in the first place and once pictures of it got into the press (or videos, the sound effects of dogs waiting to be stunned or hanging up to have their throats cut wouldn't play well and might invoke images of the slaughter and consumption of dogs for human food which some people in the West seem to draw the line at) the zoo probably wouldn't be too popular. So in at least this first phase they would probably stay away from what many people would regard as 'real' pets.

When I took Biology II my senior year of high school, we had to dissect a cat. The cats were purchased from a company like Carolina Biological Supply, already preserved. We were told they were stray cats that had been euthanized. One of the cats had something wrong with the organs, I don't remember what now, but I remember our teacher saying something about how the way they euthanized them in a vacuum chamber had something to do with that.

And then when I was an undergrad biology major, I took an Experimental Physiology Laboratory class where we had to extract living tissue from rats to experiment on. We would euthanize they rats by putting them in little chambers and pumping carbon dioxide in.

So there are ways to euthanize mammals that don't involve drugs that would make them inedible.

 

[Cobi]

From a PR perspective... what did they think was gonna happen? Like, we can all wax eloquent about different practices in different countries, but the way international news is reporting on this, you'd think Aalborg Zoo was committing crimes against nature

As others have said, they are doing what has been the practice in Denmark in general and specifically at Aalborg Zoo for some time. I missed how it got picked up on by international clickbate hungry media but I’m pretty sure it will be forgotten before long as they move on to the next sensation and no one in Denmark will care anyway and that’s all that really matters.

 

[LiSom]

As others have said, they are doing what has been the practice in Denmark in general and specifically at Aalborg Zoo for some time. I missed how it got picked up on by international clickbate hungry media but I’m pretty sure it will be forgotten before long as they move on to the next sensation and no one in Denmark will care anyway and that’s all that really matters.

True. I worked in Denmark for some time, this was few years after the case of the giraffe in Copenhagen zoo and of course I had to ask about it... Both people in the field and people that never worked in zoos agreed it was a right thing to do. They all agreed the zoo was not able to provide a proper place for that giraffe and as no other facility was taking it then it was okay to euthanize and for the public dissection it is a pretty common practice there (kids in school are brought to see pig dissection when visiting the typical "family farm" and some facilities offer dissection on their animals or road kill). I'm pretty sure this case is gonna feel the same there, it is common practice so people won't discuss much about it, just from outside is seeing as weird but just like the giraffe eventually media will forget and if anyone ever bring it up it is not that rocket science to see that no other zoo outside Scandinavia is publicly asking for guinea pig donations to feed their animals so it doesn't really represent the industry.

 

[Zz123]

I think it’s pretty clear. The zoo sees it the same whether it's a pet or any other animal — if the owner doesn’t want it, just send it to the zoo to be disposed of. It’s a win-win for everyone: the owner gets rid of an unwanted animal, and the zoo gets food to feed its own animals.