After shooting dead twelve Guinea baboons to alleviate overcrowding, Nuremberg Zoo faces fresh controversy as visitors were shocked to see the primates’ carcasses being fed to the lions.
Local media reported that the headless, limbless cadavers were served to the big cats in full view of the public. “They were presented like on a butcher’s bench, it was really awful,” one female visitor told the Nürnberger Nachrichten. The zoo’s management said the feeding times were clearly signposted and visitors could have avoided them. The heads had been removed so that the brains could be examined for research purposes.
More than 300 complaints have been lodged against the cull, which the zoo insisted was inevitable, after it had spent years trying and failing to find alternative accommodation for the primates and to control their population through contraception.
The zoo said that the cull, in which the animals were anesthetized and then shot, was agreed after consulting veterinary and environmental authorities, as well as the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria. The zoo insisted that the reduction in the size of the group was unavoidable because the 43 baboons had far exceeded the enclosure’s capacity of 25. The overcrowding had led to conflicts between inmates, leaving several injured.
While other German zoos defended Nuremberg’s course of action, they said they had managed their primate population by sterilizing the animals, or finding alternative accommodation. The German Animal Welfare Association said the killing of supposedly surplus animals has become a common practice in zoos in recent years, but that the killing of primates due to overcrowding was a new development. Anna Ritzinger, an animal rights activist, said: “Primates are very similar to us, which is why it affects so many people.”
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