Denmark zoo asks people to donate their small pets as food for captive predators

https://apnews.com/article/denmark-zoo-pet-donations-food-predators-6e124050c269331600ec93b266de31ff

I can’t get over this

Noooooo Marmaduke!!!!!

"Here you go."

"...this is a human being."

"Well, it's a bit odious, can't you take it?"

thread needs tuomas

I think the thing that bugs me is that they euthanize the pets; they don't let the predators actually, you know, prey on them.

(xp) Frederik B surely?

tuomas may be finnish, not danish, but he'd be more likely to be a member of a pets with chronic diseases rights organization or something like that. i hope he's well.

this probably means i'm a bad person but i have a wicked little chuckle every time i hear about someone living in a phoenix exurb or somewhere similar whose shih tzu gets scooped up by a mountain lion. or hell even if it's a small child *shrug*.

this probably means i'm a bad person but i have a wicked little chuckle every time i hear about someone living in a phoenix exurb or somewhere similar whose shih tzu gets scooped up by a mountain lion. or hell even if it's a small child *shrug*.

Reminds me of this legendary tweet:

My neighbor told me coyotes keep eating his outdoor cats so I asked how many cats he has and he said he just goes to the shelter and gets a new cat afterwards so I said it sounds like he’s just feeding shelter cats to coyotes and then his daughter started crying.

hahahaha oh man

I think the thing that bugs me is that they euthanize the pets; they don't let the predators actually, you know, prey on them.

I don't understand why that bugs you. It would be totally against typical animal welfare laws to allow them to be killed that way. Arguably, it would be objectively cruel to subject them to that, based on common human understanding of what constitutes cruelty. Obviously, animals killing other animals in the wild is different, because there's no human involvement.

As to my attitude to the scheme, my first reaction was, oh, that doesn't sound very nice, but if the pet was going to be euthanised anyway, I don't see any issue. I suppose some pet owners might not like the idea of their pet's intact carcass being torn apart by an animal, as opposed to being dumped in a bin, or incinerated. But aside from that, personally, I would never want to have a pet, because of the need to deal with the issue. I did once take a cat to be euthanised and it was quite upsetting.

I think we should remember that the Zoo is requesting “healthy” animals.

Possibly this belongs in the Elderly Parents thread, but I was trying to talk to my mother about what she wants done with her remains. She suggested that her corpse be fed to one of the the big cats in the National Zoo. I suspect the zookeepers would not consent to such a plan.

I think part of this is that elderly horses and other livestock are taken to a slaughterhouse, where they are killed swiftly if not mercifully, and the remains are processed for pet food. If this story is correct (I should probably check Snopes.com to see if they have analyzed this), the Denmark zoo may be proposing to cut out the middleman.

The BBC report I read does open with the statement that the zoo has appealed for donations of ‘healthy unwanted pets’. But is that accurate reporting? Later in the article, the zoo’s deputy director is quoted as saying that ‘it makes sense to allow animals that need to be euthanised for various reasons to be of use in this way.’ I suppose that might include animals that ‘need’ to be euthanised simply because the owner doesn’t want to keep them. Elsewhere in the article it says that horses must not have been treated for an illness within the last 30 days. My first thought was that that seemed to imply animals not medically treated recently would be healthy, but no, I wonder if perhaps what they mean is if they have received medical treatment recently, there might be residues of medications/drugs in the carcass and they wouldn’t want the zoo animals to ingest those. I could be wrong but I wonder if the journalist has misinterpreted the information supplied by the zoo.

On the other hand, it could be exactly as stated, i.e. that the zoo is perfectly willing to euthanise healthy animals, so long as consent is given by the owner. Is that in fact how vets dealing with the public operate? You don’t want this perfectly healthy dog, so we’re happy to kill it for you, for a fee?

this probably means i'm a bad person but i have a wicked little chuckle every time i hear about someone living in a phoenix exurb or somewhere similar whose shih tzu gets scooped up by a mountain lion. or hell even if it's a small child *shrug*.

I am here for any stories about dog-eating children than anyone would like to share

Does your child bite?
“No”
Ow he bit me! I thought you said your child doesn’t bite!
“That’s not my child”

Is that in fact how vets dealing with the public operate? You don’t want this perfectly healthy dog, so we’re happy to kill it for you, for a fee?

A lot of vets will try their hardest to rehome unwanted but healthy animals, but fundamentally, yes, vets euthanise perfectly healthy unwanted animals all the time. That's what kill shelters do, for example. It's what happens to dogs that bite children.

When my friend worked as a receptionist at our local vet, she told me about a woman who, when her cat got its tail caught in a door and the tail broke and had to be amputated, wanted the cat put to sleep because it was no longer a complete animal and she couldn't have it in the house. The vets had to pretend they'd done it, but really one of the nurses took the cat home.

And it murdered her! (No.)

Yeah, always insane how neglectful and capricious some pet owners can be.