I’m not a huge fan of zoos either, but I understand that some of them do important conservation work. The Copenhagen Zoo appears to have a team that does great work for giraffes; I would be surprised if these people didn’t care very deeply for their animals.
That being said, I am not surprised that they did not accept hail Mary offers to make a home for the giraffe. Moving zoo animals is not something that is done on an emotional basis; likely the new home would have had to go through some pretty rigorous vetting to see if they could care for the giraffe over the entire course of its life, and not just throughout the “You’re a hero!” media blitz that would follow. And then, what would they do about the next giraffe in Marius’ situation? Are we going to find homes for them all?
From what I’ve read on this, it doesn’t sound like the slaughter was public – only the autopsy. As to whether the autopsy should have been public, I’m of two minds. I know that as a graduate student in biology, I was jealous of the few students in my department who had the opportunity to attend autopsies of large mammals in zoos (these were very few, and done privately). So, I can understand that a public autopsy is something of a gift. However, it is a wasted one if it will turn public support away from the zoo. The zoo let the parents decide whether or not to bring children – again, great for the few who might benefit from the learning experience, but will the parents make the correct decision for their kids? I don’t know. Neither could the zoo. But consider – children who grow up on farms are not oblivious to the deaths of animals. Apart from it being a giraffe, I would bet that this wasn’t a new experience to every child there.
My response is to trust the zoo in the matter of putting down the giraffe, but I think they made an error in allowing the autopsy and feeding of the giraffe to other animals to be public.
And I would urge everyone to remember that we would not even be having this discussion if Marius were a cow, or a deer, or a mouse.