Any chickens or rabbits to spare? Denmark's Aalborg Zoo is seeking animals to feed to its predators – after they have been euthanized – a plea that has sparked a public backlash.
"We are looking for small livestock, not pets," Anette Sofie Warncke Nutzhorn, one of the zoo's managers, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday. "It can be, for instance, a chicken that doesn't lay eggs anymore."
"Predators usually catch prey of this size, so it's like the natural course," she added.
The zoo has found itself in hot water since sending out the appeal on social media.
"If you have an animal that, for various reasons, has to go, you are welcome to donate it to us," it wrote last week.
The zoo specified that it was looking in particular for chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs and horses.
"The animals are carefully put down by qualified staff and then used as food," it said.
Only healthy animals are accepted by the zoo, which has been accepting donated animals for several years.
"It is a very common practice; we were just sending a friendly reminder," Warncke Nutzhorn said.
The zoo later turned off the comments section on the social media post in response to what it called "hateful" postings.
Practices at Danish zoos, particularly the euthanasia of healthy animals to limit the risk of inbreeding, have in the past triggered fierce international criticism.
In 2014, a giraffe calf named Marius was put down at the Copenhagen Zoo, and staff later performed an autopsy on the carcass in front of visitors, before feeding it to the lions.
