A Danish zoo is asking owners of pets nearing life’s end to donate them as food | Hacker News Reader

A Danish zoo is asking owners of pets nearing life’s end to donate them as food

nytimes.com

20 pointszdw14 comments

American in Denmark here. There are dozens of stories like this where the Danes have a very matter of fact attitude to all sorts of topics. Life+Dealth, Sex, etc etc. One story that was relayed to me yesterday was that the Zoo in Copenhagen got in some trouble because they had to put down a baby Giraffe and decided to do a dissection for some school kids. Nobody in Denmark cared, but it made to international news. My daughter's public school had "stone age week" in 4th grade and they hunted ducks with spears, prepped and cooked them over an open fire.

I always remember the scene in Jurassic Park when they try to feed a goat to the T-Rex, he doesn't show up, and then Jeff Goldblum says "T-Rex doesn’t want to be fed. He wants to hunt."

This seems partially to be like that, mostly out of compassion. Nobody wants their pet to be hunted like in the wild, but at least the rest of the process can continue.

I think of this line (and the general sentiment) a lot in life. I don't want to be handed a reward. I want to earn it.

Well, they're killing the animals before feeding them to the lions etc. So it won't have much of a hunting experience. But perhaps a scavenging experience is enough for them.

Yeah that’s what I meant by it being partial for compassion reasons. They still get the feel of eating the whole body as the article states. But not the feeling of hunting it.

Post-covid, there seems to be more pet give-backs as people realize they don't have the financial or time resources to take care of them. So shelters are swimming in the things (as far as I can tell). If they're going to be put down, this would let them be put to some use other than a landfill.

"They want to bury my pets in a landfill." is a click-worth headline also. Reader beware.

I don't know about pets, but I would probably donate my own body as carnivorous cat/bird food.

I don't think that's a fate fundamentally worse than being an organ donor or being cremated.

If they euthanize a sick animal, won’t the euthanasia drug be consumed by the predator? What about the disease? Also, don’t predators go after live things that give chase?

Many predators are also scavengers, such as lions.

Note that it says they are gently euthanized first.

Otherwise I don't think there is a single horse-owner who would go through that. We have all seen what cats do with their living food.

Dupe? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44791079

Or is there a bias against BBC articles?

Please email the mods, using the footer Contact Us link, regarding the following topics:

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There are several mechanisms available to mods that they can use to assess and respond to each of those problems (seriously, all three!), but you’ll have to email them to find out more (as opposed to posting such complaints as comments, which has no effect).

Which was posted first in an earlier submission (it has to have some comments and votes before it's a dupe) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44790402

I know some people who ran a fresh+saltwater retail fish store way past it$ 'cultural due date' and may have appreciated this type of closure.

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