COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A Danish zoo plans to publicly dissect a year-old lion that it killed to avoid inbreeding – a year after another Danish zoo triggered massive online protests for killing a healthy young giraffe, dissecting it and feeding it to lions in front of children.
The Odense Zoo in central Denmark says the healthy young female lion was put down nine months ago because the zoo had too many felines. It said the animal will be dissected Thursday to coincide with the schools’ fall break.
Zookeeper Michael Wallberg Soerensen said the Odense Zoo, 105 miles west of Copenhagen, has performed public dissections for 20 years. He says they are “not for entertainment” but are educational.
“We are not chopping up animals for fun. We believe in sharing knowledge,” Wallberg Soerensen said Saturday, adding that the purpose of the public dissection was to give people “a closer-to-the-animals experience.”
The event has been mostly well received in Denmark, unlike similar plans at the Copenhagen Zoo in February 2014. That zoo faced international protests after a healthy 2-year-old giraffe named Marius, also killed to prevent inbreeding, was dissected in front of a crowd and then was fed to lions.
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