Zoo Asks Visitors to Donate Their Pets to Feed the Carnivores, Gets Fed to the Lions on Social Media

A zoo in Denmark has made an unusual request: if you feel like it, send us your pets so we can keep our lovely predator population well-fed. As one would expect, there’s been a bit of public outcry over the

“Chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs form an important part of the diet of our predators,” the zoo said, in a Facebook post, noting that such animals are “reminiscent of what” predators would “naturally hunt in nature.” It added: “In zoos, we have a responsibility to emulate the animal’s natural food chain – for both animal welfare and professional integrity.”

“If you have a healthy animal that has to leave here for various reasons, feel free to donate it to us,” it added. “We ensure natural behavior, nutrition and well-being of our predators.”

If potential donors are concerned about their loved ones meeting a violent end, the zoo has some gentle words of reassurance: “The animals are gently killed by trained staff and are then used as feed. In this way, nothing is wasted – and we ensure natural behavior, nutrition and well-being of our predators.” Oh good.

The zoo had previously made a similar appeal to the public, asking that horses (another notably beloved category of animal) be donated to the zoo so that they could be euthanized and fed to the facility’s predator population.

The online outrage was, of course, swift and merciless. The FB post’s comment section is alive with alarmed web users. “A deeply perverse and degrading mindset,” one user said (translated from Danish). “How sick are you to think of something like that,” another asked. “This is a joke right, no one would bring his healthy pet to a zoo so they can kill it and feed it to there animals,” yet another person ventured.

The zoo was predictably forced to address the outrage. “After great international interest, we have chosen to close the comment track on this lookup,” the facility hilariously said, in an edit to the post. “We understand that the call arouses emotion and interest, but hateful and vicious rhetoric is not necessary – and we urge to maintain the good tone. We elaborate and answer questions in the inbox or by mail.”

Gizmodo reached out to Aalborg Zoo for more information on this unusual policy and will update our story if they respond.

It may be the case that people who work in a particular industry for awhile forget what the “normies” on the outside are like. If you get used to seeing a cute, fluffy bunny eviscerated by a giant mouth every day, it may become tempting to assume that everybody is used to such a sight. At the very least, Aalborg’s FB post is clear evidence that zoo people aren’t necessarily pet people. If they had been, they would have realized that there is little in this world that they could have said that would have perturbed the intended audience more. They might as well have been encouraging visitors to donate their own human children as tiger bait.