Killing zoo animals to feed carnivores in German-speaking zoos and its acceptance by staff, visitors, and media

Abstract

Zoos keeping carnivores need to feed adequate animal material to these species. Several factors have contributed to the advocation of using zoo-raised animals (both domestic and non-domestic species) in a ‘breed and feed’-approach for this purpose. These include the following: The welfare of the food animals (which is probably better in animals kept at zoos than at conventional or intensive livestock farms, animals of which are additionally transported and processed in slaughterhouses; allowing reproduction and the associated social behaviours rather than preventing reproduction in zoos), sustainability (by reducing transport), education (by not excluding ‘death’ from the cycle of life presented at the zoo), the sustainability of zoo animal populations (for which the production of a certain ‘surplus’ may be considered an important safety strategy). It has also been suggested that the feeding of whole carcasses, including large ones, has psychological and physiological benefits for the carnivores, as well as providing a didactic element. On the other hand, it has been felt that feeding whole carcasses and zoo-raised animals may not be socially acceptable and hence represents a risk for the reputation of zoos. Data on these aspects are sparse. We conducted a survey among German-speaking zoos on the practice of feeding zoo-raised animals, asking about the zoos’ perceptions on which species should be excluded from this practice and about the zoos’ experiences with staff, visitor and media reactions to such feeding events. 36 zoos participated, all of which had fed zoo-raised animals to their carnivores, in 223 feeding events (21% domestic and 79% non-domestic species, 87% mammal species). The animals fed were mostly mid-sized non-domestic ruminants in 25.6% of all events, followed by mid-sized domestic ruminants in 22.0%. The taxon most often mentioned as not suitable for feeding were the great apes. Four of the nine participating zoos keeping elephants did not exempt them from being fed, in principle (although no elephant feeding was reported). Most staff and visitor reactions were judged as ‘accepting’ of the feeding events, while the media and the local press mainly ignored them. When evaluating only those events that the media did report on, the zoo staff showed the highest acceptance, followed by visitors, whereas the reactions of the press were mainly neutral, with positive reactions ranging second and the negative ones ranging third (but notably less than no reaction at all). These results suggest that, at least among the zoos participating, reactions of the public need not be considered prohibitive to the practice of feeding zoo animals to zoo animals. Continuing education and public outreach efforts that stress the many sound reasons for this practice may further increase its acceptance. This should also be reflected in the operating concept of zoos that does not represent the killing and feeding of zoo animals to zoo animals as individual cases of ‘surplus’ specimens, but as a holistic animal husbandry, breeding, and welfare concept.