An Entertainment Abuses Article from All-Creatures.org

The Killing of 'Surplus' Animals in the Zoo Industry

From VeganFTA
November 2024

A common practice of zoos and public aquaria is to kill some of the animals they keep captive because they consider them "surplus to requirement," not useful any longer to a zoo's breeding program or other goals, usually dictated by monetary profit.

Image from Pixabay

The common — and erroneous — portrayal of zoos as conservation, education, or research institutions masks a troubling practice that challenges the justifications for keeping wild animals in captivity: the systematic killing of “surplus” animals as if they were just objects that can be disposed of when not needed anymore. Many zoos around the world routinely kill animals considered redundant or unfit for breeding programs, an activity which is euphemistically termed “management euthanasia” (or zoothanasia). This practice starkly contradicts any claim that zoos are ethical institutions. Zoos, in essence, are businesses from the entertainment and tourism sectors prioritising operational convenience over the well-being of individual lives — a fact that further supports the call for their abolition.

Behind the walls of zoo enclosures, the scale of surplus animal killings is substantial. In Europe alone, it is estimated that 3,000 to 5,000 animals are killed annually in the large zoos that belong to the EAZA (European Association of Zoos and Aquaria), including mammals, birds, and reptiles. However, this number does not capture the entirety of the issue, because EAZA does not publish these records or advertise the number of healthy animals that have been killed. As many zoos lack transparency, and as public aquaria are likely to kill many more animals without much evidence of their deaths, the true scale of this practice is difficult to ascertain.

It’s not Euthanasia, it’s Killing

The killing of healthy animals in zoos has been occurring for centuries, but when the zoo industry began to use conservation and education excuses to justify their existence in a world that began to grow uncomfortable with the idea of keeping wild animals in captivity for entertainment, then their PR machines began to hide it. Only relatively recently the public knowledge of these practices surfaced again when some zoos decided to be more transparent.

This new “unashamed” approach started in 2014 when Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark sparked international outrage by killing a healthy two-year-old giraffe named Marius due to his genetic unsuitability for breeding. Bengt Holst, the Copenhagen Zoo’s scientific director, wrote off killing Marius as business as usual (the body was even shown to the public and fed to other animals). A few weeks later, four lions were also zoothanised at the same zoo. Tobias Stenbaek Bro, a spokesman for the Copenhagen Zoo told CNN that two of those were young lions that were not old enough to survive by themselves and would have been killed by the new male lion if it had the chance.

Just a week before Marius was killed, another Danish zoo openly announced that they had killed two healthy lions. Michael Sorenson, curator of Odense Zoo, said, “We have around about 2,000 animals herein. The number is less than 10 a year which we have in surplus. So, if you look at the numbers it’s a small fraction.”

Image from Pixabay

Other published cases include five giraffes killed in Denmark from October 2012 to February 2014, four hippos killed across Europe in 2012 (Portugal, Spain, Germany and Denmark), 22 healthy zebras killed between 2000 and 2012 (including one at Marwell in the UK), 11 Arabian Oryx killed in Edinburgh, London, Rotterdam and Zurich between 2000 and 2009, plus dozens more at zoos in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Zoo management often justifies culling with reasons related to genetic management, space constraints, or financial considerations. Breeding programs, space shortages, and the need for “genetic variety” in captive populations are used to rationalise a continuous cycle of death within these institutions. The truth is that these zoos commodify animals, treating them not as sentient beings but as expendable assets to be culled at will.

Despite what the zoos say, these killings are not euthanasia. The vegan Ethologist Mark Bekoff explains this when talking about a case of two “surplus” lions being killed: “Euthanasia is mercy killing that is used when an individual is interminably ill or suffering from interminable pain. The lion cubs who were killed were neither interminably ill nor suffering from interminable pain. Neither were other animals who have been killed in zoos — they were killed because they weren’t useful any longer to a zoo’s breeding program or other goals, usually dictated by monetary profit.”

The Cycle of Life and Death

Zoos perpetuate a harmful cycle. Animals are born into captivity, sometimes in programs aimed at maintaining specific genetic lines. As a result, zoos are filled with animals who, due to lack of genetic “necessity,” will inevitably be killed. Thus, instead of contributing to conservation, zoos contribute to a cycle of breeding and killing that serves little purpose beyond sustaining the zoo industry itself. This model is exploitative at its core, breeding animals only to treat them as dispensable commodities.

Most zoo visitors remain unaware of the extent of surplus animal killings, partly because zoos work hard to maintain an image of ethical, conservation-oriented spaces. The cases that do come to public attention, like Marius the giraffe, are often dismissed as rare exceptions, while in reality, they are symptomatic of a much larger, ongoing practice. This misinformation allows zoos to continue their operations with minimal scrutiny from the public, who remain largely unaware that the price of their ticket may directly support the killing of healthy animals deemed unnecessary by zoo management.​

For those who believe in the right of animals to live free from human exploitation, like ethical vegans, zoos must be abolished by stopping the creation of any new ones and phasing out the current ones (which can be achieved by stopping any breeding and banning the capture of any animal from the wild). These institutions cannot claim to care for animal welfare while simultaneously ending the lives of animals purely for logistical ease. The killing of surplus animals reveals the ethical bankruptcy at the heart of the zoo industry, where animals are bred for profit (as part of the entertainment or tourism industries). The solution to animal conservation is not found within the walls of a zoo but in respecting the individual animals’ lives and habitats working in the wild areas where the animals naturally live (known as Compassionate conservation).

Zoos kill animals.

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: November 2024
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