[video url redacted]. OK, just Google 'giraffes fighting' to see good design in action!

That night... 10 cute little lion cubs starved to death... bastard giraffe

Your video, Mother Giraffe protecting calf from pride of Lions, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

was that a dead giraffe at the start?

I dont understand the interviewer or people being wildly upset by this, do they really think the zookeepers, who feed and care for this giraffe are simply sadistic morons who kills a giraffe for fun or just because they can? Obviously there was a reason for this.

I am , however, in principal against zoos. they may be educational on some level, but I have a distaste for the concept of keeping wild animals imprisoned like this. But I do think that most zoos and zookeepers do their best under the circumstances to keep the animals happy as they can be. Most wild animals in the wild of course, live in perpetual fear and/or hunger, and so forth, but I am much more in favour of us spending money on preserving wilderness, and stop the perpetual destruction of their natural habitat, instead of keeping specimens in special "cages"/zoos.

@A10anis

They probably didn't let the lions hunt it because there would be a chance of the lions being injured during an actual hunt (for example, if the giraffe fell over on top of one of the lions).

Also, there is probably not enough room in the zoo for an open hunt. And it seems even crueler than killing the giraffe outright. The animal will run for its life in terror and might even evade the lions for a while but since the hunt must take place in an enclosed area there's no hope of escape for it.

And as others have mentioned, the death itself would be a lot more painful.

All this talk of food, I'm starting to wonder what a barbequed giraffe steak would be like.

I'm not sure how anyone could have thought this was a terrible thing? Lions have to eat meat, and animals will have to be killed for all their meals. If it wasn't a giraffe, it would be a cow. Is a giraffe's life more sacred than a cow's life? If so, why? Just because we are used to the idea of cows dieing for our food?

This is real life, and I don't think we should hide it from children. Shooting a giraffe in the head is brutal, but way less brutal than a bunch of lions biting it to death. If people aren't fans of feeding animals meat, then maybe they should be protesting against keeping carnivores in zoos.

Wow, a scientist made a decision for scientific reasons. Who knew?

Idiot fucking interviewer: we would "protect" children from this.

Yeah, heaven forfend that kids grow up learning that meat comes from animals or how a giraffes heart has to be huge.

I bet the giraffe, if we were able to ask, would be ok with a quick bullet to the head instead of being ripped apart, most likely suffocating to death as one or more lions crushed it's neck.

The death of the giraffe would be far more "inhumane" in the wild, but would still have the same outcome, and the lions are also protected from possible complications from eating a raw carcass.

I also upvoted shatterdrose's bringing the whole burger idea into this. What's the difference between the cattle that are normally slaughtered for the lions and the giraffe? Beyond your opinion on the meat that is.

As I said repeatedly, I agree with you that zoos are unnatural.

You start with unnatural, you end with unnatural.

You start with unnatural, you end up making unnatural choices.

This is a hard hard world, and we as humans are killing it more and more every day.

Zoos have morphed from being horrible cages, confining animals to be gawked at by unfeeling humans. Now zoos, the good ones, do their damnedest to create as natural an environment as possible.

Which still isn't very natural.

You say that this was an "unconscionable" choice, the killing of poor Marius (by the way, I mourn him, too.)

Do you think they should have taken the $600K from the wealthy person wanting to save his life? Even though it would have sentenced poor Marius to isolation and depression for the rest of his "natural" life? To me, that would be unconscionable. Blood money, made off the suffering of a single animal.

I think the real problem here is the very existence of zoos. There would be no Marius if there were no zoos.

I keep thinking about my dad's second wife. She was a piece of cake -- not the sharpest knife in the drawer, not capable of reasoned, step by step thinking. She had a great native -- almost feral -- intelligence though, it just wasn't that "logical."

One day, my uber-logical engineer father said something that she didn't like. I didn't like it either. So Oleta said, in a thick Okie drawl, "Just because something is right, doesn't mean it is right."

I almost started laughing at the absurdity of her statement, until I realized what she was really saying. So I asked her, "Do you mean just because something is logical, that doesn't mean it is right?" Yep. That was what she meant.

I think this is one of those situations. There are logical step by step reasons that led to poor Marius being literally fed to the lions. And then there is the emotional truth of a healthy and happy young giraffe being treated like he wasn't an individual with a right to a natural life.

Just because it was right, doesn't mean it was right.

You say; "Those lions got fed their natural diet for a change. Consider being happy for them?"
Certainly. But I would be happier if the lions had hunted it down in the wild, as nature intended, rather than it being handed to them. Anyway, meat IS their natural diet, ANY meat. Or do they normally feed their captive lions on tinned cat food?
Nature takes no prisoners, it is cruel. But this wasn't nature. It was the slaughter of a perfectly healthy giraffe in their care, and is unconscionable.

One thing not mentioned here is that the zookeepers were offered $600K to "sell" Marius to an individual. They refused -- giraffes are herd animals and Marius would have had a horrible existence. They could have done a lot of good with that money, but they turned it down as the ultimate ethical decision.

Here's the thing -- zoos are unnatural places and they lead to unnatural results. @A10anis is correct. Against this, one can ask what GOOD do zoos do? Maintain a healthy gene pool to populate the wild. Instill a love of nature in city folks.

And maybe help foster the wildlife conservation scientists and wildlife biologists for the future.

The world isn't perfect. Terrible things happen. The world is a place of scarcity of resources. As thinking, reasoning, feeling beings, we must make choices.

And as I keep thinking -- for those who are appalled at the waste of this young giraffe's happy life, maybe shift your focus to the lions? In this unnatural place of the zoo, those lions got fed their natural diet for a change. Consider being happy for them? In this unnatural world?

I couldn't help replacing giraffe with human; "It is perfectly natural sir. You will die anyway, but your dying now preserves the gene pool."
It was scary listening to the cold, clinical, matter of fact way in which he described it as nothing but the giraffes genes that condemned it. Forget that it was healthy and enjoying - if that's the right word - its confined existence. Yes, the killing of animals goes on everyday. But this execution was totally unnecessary.

As for zoos; If it's a breeding programme fine, but I hate zoos that exist simply to have people pay to gawp at the caged animals. It is totally unnatural for them and even those born into it can display psychotic behaviour. As for caging birds? Don't get me started...