Denmark: why a second giraffe could be slaughtered

Sunday, February 9, Marius, an 18-month-old giraffe from the Copenhagen zoo was euthanized, before being butchered in front of the public in the park and fed to the wild animals. Had this behavior sparked an uproar around the world, it does not appear to have altered Denmark’s parks policy as another zoo in the country is said to be on the verge of slaughtering a second perfectly healthy giraffe. Also called Marius, the 7-year-old male giraffe – who lives in an enclosure with another younger male – could bear the brunt of a female’s arrival in the enclosure. “We can’t have two males and a female. There would be fights, ”explains Janni Lojtved Poulsen, a keeper at Jyllands Zoo, located in western Denmark.

Like its namesake in Copenhagen, Jyllands’ giraffe Marius is considered unfit for reproduction since he has genes that are too common, which could create risks of inbreeding. The zookeeper explained to Guardian that the managers of the park will not be influenced by the wave of protest that followed the euthanasia of the giraffe in Copenhagen: more than 27,000 people around the world had signed a petition to try to save it, and the zoo director has received death threats.

The fate of Jyllands’ giraffe also attracts the compassion of the public and their anger vis-à-vis the zoological institution since a petition set up 3 days ago has already received more than 12,000 signatures. On Thursday, the Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov offered to collect Marius in the zoo of the small Russian republic of the Caucasus, “out of humanism”.