Under the category of: Are you frigging kidding me? comes this story
Trust the Guardian to come up with the best lede: If you are a giraffe and your name is Marius, now might be a good time to leave Denmark.
Who can forget the first Marius? He was the healthy young giraffe shot in the head, his body chopped up and then fed to the lions at Copenhagen Zoo. Marius had the ill-fortune to be born in captivity in a zoo and the zoo feared in-breeding.
This still-alive Marius, who lives at Jyllands Park Zoo in western Denmark, also had the misfortune to be born in captivity in a zoo that already has enough giraffes.
What’s dependent on Marius’ fate is whether a female giraffe can be found for the zoo. If yes, seven-year-old Marius will be put down because he’s unsuitable for breeding and the zoo already has a younger male giraffe name Elmer it would rather keep.
Zookeeoer Janni Løjtved Poulsen said it was likely Jyllands Park will acquire a female giraffe in the future and in this story in the Chicago Tribune, she explained why two males and one female in a zoo means problems.
“We can’t have two males and one female. Then there will be fights.”
Despite the massive global protests that have followed in the wake of Copenhagen Zoo’s decision to kill its Marius, Poulsen said Jyllands Zoo will not be influenced by protesters. Nearly 30,000 people worldwide signed a petition urging Marius, the first, be saved.
And since his publicly-broadcast death and dissection earlier this week, viewed by children invited by the zoo to witness the event, zoo officials have received death threats. Poulsen, with Jyllands Zoo, said no decision has been made on whether Marius, the second’s death, will be so public.
h/t: The Guardian, Chicago Tribune
Photo credit: The Guardian
Youtube: Jyllands Zoo