I have, among else, provided you with these publicly made statements: "...we simply have too many of them in the zoos and there just wasn't room for these two." Assistant director, Bengt Holst. Copenhagen Zoo. "... the lion enclosure was not big enough for them..." Thomas Jermann, curator. Basel Zoo. Then don´t breed them, I say! Taun wants me to provide more examples, Yeah, right... as if this subject was of interest to the general public and our daily news were overflowing with news on the subject.
Although Dan can be overzealous and emotional I really don't like what I read. Especially in endagered animals cases under EEP. For me this is unjustifiable.
You’re dodging providing real proof! Because there is no proof that loads of zoos are breeding animal to get people in there, only to kill them in a few years. Hmm... let me see, did the Knut story reach your country? As it certainly made big news in the UK and that was all over one animal in a zoo. So I think zoos killing animals on a yearly basis because of lack of room would of made the news. Bascially your thread lacks any real evidence to confirm your theory.
Most people on this forum know that the Amur Tigers are at capacity within the EEP. Therefore individual’s zoos need to follow the studbook keeper recommendations carefully, but these are actually that only recommendations and each zoo does not need to follow them. With the population at Full-capacity some zoos are turning to more endangered tigers, because they can breed from these and they will have homes for the cubs. If you ask me it's a case of bad management or mistake at Copenhagen Zoo, therefore this situation arisen.
Sorry, but what kind of proof do you expect? Do you want a zoo director to confirm that? Come on, nobody sany would do that. I understand you. We both have a home zoo which would never do that so it is hard to believe it would even happen somewhere. But it is obvious that making profit is an essential part of the mantioned cases. Sadly.
How important are cubs for the zoo? Zingg: A zoo is a commercial establishment. Cubs are an attractive equipment for us. They help us to finance our establishment. Robert Zingg, curator of mammals in the Zurich zoo about the killing of young animals, population control and animal care. ----- if he really said that...
Bad management, laziness, incompetence, ignorance... that doesn't exclude a temporary benefit because of the attractvie cubs.
Docend24, am just trying to get to the bottom of Dan’s claim that it was common in zoos to do this. See Quote below. I must admit that no zoo keeper will come out and confirm this, but to cover up this with the all the beady eyed zoobeaters there are is hard to believe We all knew this, baby animals are attractive equipment for zoos and am not going to deny that. Chester advertised their high profile births to draw visitors in, doesn't mean they are going to kill them any time soon!
Back to bears - Berlin was attacked by animal rights activists because it DIDN'T kill Knut and raised it by hand. So, you can have different opinions about what is good for animals. Dan if you are so concerned about these siberian tigers in Copenhagen: Simply send e-mail to the Copenhagen zoo, instead of asking all the world except the people who know. And let us know what they answer.
What I don't understand with everything that I have read on this thread - has Copenhagen actually admitted euthanasing the tiger cubs? Dan's comment was that they were killed. Could it have been a parent that killed the cubs? To me the whole discussion is based on very little information in which to make an informed comment.
To tetrapod Since English is not my first language, I probably often press myself unclear. But the in case you are asking about, see the link below. Copenhagen Zoo openly admits that the young ones were euthanized. The Copenhagen Post To docend24 Nice to see an another forum member taking an interest in the subject! I will see what else I can dig up. In fact, what actually triggered me to "provoke" this discussion is a distinct - and yet unfortunately blurred - memory of having watched, heard or read about some senior official at a Danish zoo openly discuss the matter - in a very as-a-matter-of-fact and unsentimental way. For the life of me I cannot remember where, though..... I´m inclined to believe that it could have been in an interview in a Danish newspaper published on the internet. I´m pretty sure that it wasn´t anyone from Copenhagen Zoo, but someone from some of the other big zoos in Denmark. I will google the Danish newsmedia and see if I can find it. Naturally my critics will not be satisfied by this vague memory of mine - and of course they should not be. Hope I can find it, though.
With breeding groups of antelope and deer surplus males - very often far more males than females seem to be born - are a 'problem' . Some are put down at birth , others at the time when they would normally be ejected from the herd by the dominant male . I prefer the second option which is probably better for the mother . In the wild many of these outcasts would be killed by lions/tigers - I would hope that the zoos similarly feed their cats with these 'problem' males . This is not normally admitted by zoos but check out annual reports with large numbers of neo-natal deaths and 'departures' which can include culling .
Bele that’s slightly a different matter, these animals are not breed to draw crowds in. With males being less desirable there is also going to be a surplus of antelope and deer species. Zoos are dammed if they do and are dammed if they don’t by animal rights campaigners! If zoos kept their animals in single sex groups to stop unwanted pregnancies, people would complain that there not meeting the animals needs to mate! So they keep them in family groups to allow this interaction with the animals on conceptions accidents can happen, so what do you do with them? Some people are never happy!
i remember reading articles on lion cubs being killed, but that was because they were accidents and could not be housed ..... not to draw people in
Do those species automactically have a higher gender artio as in this case males favouring, or is it just something to do with captive breeding? There are particular animals which have a huge amount of difference in gender percentage, though most of them are reptile,
I saw on Discovery channel that zoo animals tend to have more males than females because they do not struggle to get food and protect their territory everyday. In the wild it's more likely that an animal will die, so more females are born to be able to breed. I saw the show along time ago, so I don't remember that much about it. About animals being bred only to attract guest, then killing them. I have never heard of anything like that here in America.
This is actually interesting. Gender of mammals and birds is determined at conception by chromosomes. But for many species in the wild and in zoos more males are born in good conditions, and more females in bad. It was recently found that high glucose level in blood of pregnant female selectively kills female embryos at early stage. This would be of obvious use for zoos (try to monitor glucose and not overfeed if you want females born, e.g. in elephants) but I don't know if this finding was applied. Or, of course, if it is doable in practice.
