The female lion was killed in 2019 when it could not agree on a new male lion and could not be sold to another zoo.
Since then, the animal has been preserved, until last Sunday, when the zoo chose to dissect the lion in front of a large audience.
- The animal is used for educational purposes.
In our opinion, this is not problematic, but you invite people who choose to come and watch, says Daniel Roth.
Thinking differently
- The view in Denmark is more holistic than in Sweden, the zoologist continues, explaining that open dissection is practiced on an annual basis at Odense Zoo.
So you do not think that this can happen in Sweden?
- It would have been good if it did.
We do not look at animals in the same way and this means that students are not allowed to share this knowledge, which is unfortunate, says Daniel Roth.
Previous criticism
Despite the fact that a major storm of criticism arose in 2014 when Copenhagen Zoo killed the perfectly healthy giraffe Marius and dissected it in front of children, among others, this does not stop the director of Odense Zoo, Bjarne Klausen.
- We do it because we want to create more fascination.
We are here to create fascination for nature and the adaptations that the lion has to be the perfect killing machine where they live.
We really want to tell those stories, he says to DR and adds:
- Death and life are a natural part of everyday life even in our lives as human beings.
We just pick up death in the fridge, but getting closer and seeing how the animals work is incredibly important.