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Actually in the wild it's the young, old, and weak that don't survive. The young rarely survive. I watched a BBC show yesterday on wolves and one pair had been breeding for 7 years. In that 7 years, only 3 pups made it to adulthood. She gave birth to large litters. That year she had 9. None made it.
What's graphic about it? If you don't want to watch, that's fine. But your food in the grocery store wasn't created by fairies. Animals were in fact murdered and chopped up for you to eat! What's the difference?
All worked out great then, the Zoo has a lot of negative PR right across the world, those responsible will no doubt be targeted by animal rights extremists and a healthy animal was destroyed, which the Zoo could have received money for and which could have gone to a different Zoo under the premise that it wouldn't be bred from.
Oh and for those Americans who aren't sure about Extremist Animal Rights Groups in Europe such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) imagine the extreme nutters involved in the targeting of abortion centres in the US and you are thinking along the right lines.
If this was a nature show that filmed actual happenings in the wild, that is a different story. Zoos are manufactured environments, and no matter how hard they try to pretend to be a natural habitat, they just aren't.
They got a lot of press, which was maybe the point. It seems extremely callous and cruel to me. But then again, I don't eat mammals. Don't judge anyone that does, but the entire thought of butchering a cow, pig, or giraffe, makes me sick to my stomach. And I grew up in a family of avid deer hunters.
This was a gross publicity stunt...animal snuff porn. Ick.
And killing it when it was reaching for the rye bread YOU taught it to eat? That director should rot.
Last edited by confusedasusual; 02-10-2014 at 03:14 PM..
My only problem with what they did is the fact they think they made the right decision when I think, they only made an arbitrary decision. If they think the decisions of their little organization will have any influence on the future of geopolitics or societal upheaval that will cause the massive extinction of different specifies on Earth, then they are being very naive. Might as well save as many of these animals today and pray for a better future where these animals can survive.
He was most likely the only male in the herd ... the rest were likely his mom & 1/2 sisters. They didn't Want HIM to produce inbred offspring with genic problems!
BTW they Do feed the Lions Horses & Cows & Hogs & Chickens! Wheres the uproar in that? Even to Zoo animals in the USA!
So sad, so ironic. I'm sitting here watching Jane Velez-Mitchell who has some real housewife bimbo on there talking about it as if she's remotely an expert on anything, and they are both blasting the zoo as if they just committed genocide and how dare the zoo this and that.
Meanwhile, millions of animals suffer in disgusting, atrocious conditions in factory farms here in the US and across the world. They live lives so full of pain that death is an end to the misery. But it's okay, we are willing to ignore that so we don't have to give up our meat. We can be ignorant about that because it costs too much to accept the truth. And of course the media isn't gonna report it. But one giraffe who undoubtedly lived a painless life and had a quick death is outrageous. Give. me. a. break. It's the epitome of hypocrisy.
I'd like to know what the big difference is between a cow and a giraffe and why it's okay to treat one herbivorous mammal one way and one another way? I don't think the zoo was necessarily right but it's sure as hell much more humane about how it treats its animals than the animal corpse industry is here in the US.
If this was a nature show that filmed actual happenings in the wild, that is a different story. Zoos are manufactured environments, and no matter how hard they try to pretend to be a natural habitat, they just aren't.
They got a lot of press, which was maybe the point. It seems extremely callous and cruel to me. But then again, I don't eat mammals. Don't judge anyone that does, but the entire thought of butchering a cow, pig, or giraffe, makes me sick to my stomach. And I grew up in a family of avid deer hunters.
This was a gross publicity stunt...animal snuff porn. Ick.
And killing it when it was reaching for the rye bread YOU taught it to eat? That director should rot.
^This. Those children in the picture looked truly horrified watching this.
Educational purposes perhaps? My sister is inbetween a standard vet tech and a vet, and she use to watch nature videos and such all the time, not to mention go to the slaughter house and watch how they were butchered. She's not in a top position at one of the premier vets offices in the country.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frostnip
Plus, if he couldn't breed, it doesn't matter if he was of an endangered species. In terms of recovery of the species he's useless if he's not producing offspring.
The potential unethical behavior I'm seeing here on the part of the zoo was producing the young giraffe in the first place. How did they not know ahead of time that he'd be too inbred? Poor planning. Unless he was an accident, I suppose.
I'm thinking if he would have been born FEMLAE this wouldn't have happened. Farmers do this ALL THE TIME. Especially with pigs. They can breed the females, but too many males equals MAJOR problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by animalcrazy
Why was a young giraffe chosen instead of an older one in the same gene pool? I understand that nature takes it course but doesn't it usually choose to cull the weak and old?
If he would have been in the wild, he probably wouldn't have made it to age 2 in the first place.
Besides cull the younger on, so he won't breed with his sister or even worse, his MOTHER!
Adults know where their food comes from. Even children are aware of this and most have seen enough nature shows to know some animals chase and kill others for food. But they were in a zoo which is where people go for entertainment, fun family time and education about different species. Not to see zoo animals killed and slaughtered before their eyes and fed to other zoo animals.
The staff at this zoo is getting all sorts of death threats from all over the world over this so apparently it has bothered many many folks. And yes the looks on those kids' faces is truly disturbing. I'm sure there were some nightmare for quite a few children. Would these same parents have taken their kids to a slaughter house to see where hamburger comes from? Would they allow a young child to watch a beloved pet euthanized? I know zoo animals aren't pets but they certainly exploit them to the general public by having birthday parties, naming contests, coloring contests, etc which makes them much more than wild animals to many children as well as adults. Atlanta en mass mourned the passing of it's beloved gorilla Willie B many years ago. If anybody dared to cut him up and feed him to the other animals in the zoo you would have had a riot on your hands..
Adults know where their food comes from. Even children are aware of this and most have seen enough nature shows to know some animals chase and kill others for food. But they were in a zoo which is where people go for entertainment, fun family time and education about different species. Not to see zoo animals killed and slaughtered before their eyes and fed to other zoo animals.
The staff at this zoo is getting all sorts of death threats from all over the world over this so apparently it has bothered many many folks. And yes the looks on those kids' faces is truly disturbing. I'm sure there were some nightmare for quite a few children. Would these same parents have taken their kids to a slaughter house to see where hamburger comes from? Would they allow a young child to watch a beloved pet euthanized? I know zoo animals aren't pets but they certainly exploit them to the general public by having birthday parties, naming contests, coloring contests, etc which makes them much more than wild animals to many children as well as adults. Atlanta en mass mourned the passing of it's beloved gorilla Willie B many years ago. If anybody dared to cut him up and feed him to the other animals in the zoo you would have had a riot on your hands..
I don't think it was appropriate for the zoo to do it publicly, but I think this story really highlights the cognitive dissonance we as humans suffer from. Pretty much it's like saying "oh I can't believe this giraffe was killed, but I'm going to go home and feed my children hamburgers for dinner" knowing full well that cow suffered much, much crueler treatment than that giraffe. Yet we still pump billions into the meat industry, because somehow it's okay because God forbid we do without hamburgers. People just aren't willing to acknowledge that because it's too difficult for whatever reason. Or they hunt their own meat, which is more than fine by me as it's 1000x more humane than factory farms, but probably represents 1% of the population if that.
So when I read stories like this I can't help but shake my head because I know in my heart of hearts that this zoo's actions are utterly dwarfed by the sadistic things that occur in factory farms every day to animals that are not at all unlike giraffes but for the labels we humans have put on them. Yet the lesser of the two evils is the one that is vilified.
The zoo has stated that every year they cull a number of their animals. NO ONE ever cares about that, and you don't see newspaper headlines about it. In fact, I'm betting the vast majority of zoos cull animals every year. The only reason why anybody cares about the giraffe is because the giraffe was large and cute. If he had been a wolverine, or something, no one would've cared at all.
Actually, I know of a living history museum nearby where I live that has animals, and got in trouble for shooting some of the animals when they were sick or injured. There wasn't a big outcry about it at all - they were basically just told to stop shooting the animals and instead use a vet. I suppose goats just aren't as cute as giraffes in order to warrant an international outcry.
It sounds like the zoo was being responsible. The giraffe is not endangered, and this particular one was of a bloodline that was already over-represented in captivity. There were only a few other zoos who offered to take him, but one had a close relative of the giraffe, which means they would have the same bloodline problems, and another one wouldn't promise not to sell him in the future. The zoo ultimately did the common-sense thing - they culled an animal that would otherwise take a lot of money/resources from other animals, and who could not contribute to the captive giraffe gene pool without inbreeding.
All the adults and kids knew that he would be killed and butchered - they went specifically to watch. There are quotes from people who watched talking about how informational it was. They didn't have to be there, and they could've walked away at any time. So complaining about how the zoo did it in front of people is just silly. No one was forced to watch - everyone there purposefully watched.
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