14 DAY TRIAL // This Thursday, visitors to Odense Zoo in Denmark got to witness a most gruesome scene as keepers dissected a young lion out in the open for everyone to see.
Apparently, they started by removing its tongue. Then, they skinned the animal and pulled out its intestines and internal organs. They even chopped off its head.
The Local says the dissection was witnessed by hundreds of zoo visitors, among them children. The youngest of them were but 4 years old. Nobody enjoyed the experience.
Especially not when the stench coming from the lifeless body hit their nostrils. “I don't want to see that,” a young boy confessed when interviewed by a reporter.
The lion had to die, the zoo insists
Staff at Odense Zoo say the male lion that they dissected this Thursday had actually been dead since February, when it was killed because, at 9 months old, it had reached sexual maturity and so there was a risk that it could mate with its mother or maybe its sisters.
“If we had allowed it to stay it could have mated, that is to say have cubs, with its own sisters and its own mother. And then you have what is called inbreeding,” zoo guide Lotte Tranberg explained. Since it was killed and until this Thursday, when it was chopped up, the lion was kept in a freezer.
OK, but why publicly dissect it?
The zoo would've probably gotten away with killing this lion and shoving it in a freezer for safekeeping had it not staged this Thursday's macabre and completely uncalled for performance.
Despite heavy criticism, it insists it's done nothing wrong. The dissection was a simple lesson in cat anatomy, so it doesn't really make sense that people are freaking out over it, keepers say.
Animal rights activists, however, can't seem to get over their outrage. No, really, they're so upset with Odense Zoo and its allegedly educational program some are asking that the facility be shut down.