Marius, The Giraffe Killed And Used For Lions, København Zoo, Copenhagen, Denmark

The action has been criticized by Stine Jensen, from Denmark's Organisation Against the Suffering of Animals, who repudiated the action as unethical. She said, "This situation should not have occurred at all. It just shows that the zoo is in fact not the ethical institution that it wants to portray itself as being, because here you have a waste product - that being Marius. Here we have a zoo which thinks that putting this giraffe down instead of thinking of alternatives is the best option".
Images of the carcass being cut up infront of children watching and then fed to the Zoo's lion population have been circulated by Associated Press. The Zoo spokesperson 'Tobias Stenbaek Bro' has been quoted as saying that visitors, including children, were invited to watch as the giraffe was skinned and parts fed to the Lions. "I'm actually proud because I think we have given children a huge understanding of the anatomy of a giraffe that they wouldn't have had from watching a giraffe in a photo," Stenbaek Bro said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.