I mean, if an elephant dies what do they do with the body?
In Germany they are brought to a Tierkörperbeseitigungsanlage according to the Tierkörperbeseitigungsgesetz.
If the animal was healthy when it was alive and if it’s big enough, I believe they butcher the carcass and feed them to the carnivores. ~~I remember a news story about a recently deceased giraffe was fed to the lions in the zoo. ~~
I was wrong, the giraffe was killed to prevent inbreeding.
https://www.cnn.com/2014/02/09/world/europe/denmark-zoo-giraffe/index.html
I have direct experience with this.
In college, I got a job on campus in their Environment, Health, and Safety department. Mostly, I just calibrated fume hoods in labs.
During my time there, a hippo at a nearby zoo passed away. I don’t want to be too specific because it can be a bit icky, but they essentially shipped it to us for incineration.
What a phone call that must have been. I’m amazed that a college would have a big enough incenerator!
It is a large Division 1 university. I don’t know exactly how big the incinerator is. Thankfully I wasn’t the one who handled that particular task.
I assume it comes down to our hazmat clearances, though. Just a guess. That was almost 20 years ago!
I doubt that the incinerator was big enough, and that’s what the “icky specifics” covers…
Bingo.
Doesn’t sound icky. I would assume they used it for science. I’m surprised they burn them.
Honestly, we probably know everything we could learn from a dead hippo carcass.
Living on a farm tells me: Animal Carcass Disposal Options Rendering • Incineration • Burial • Composting
We almost never lost an animal (200 head of beef cattle), but even the best cared for animals past away eventually.
Thank you! That’s wild. I didn’t think a large animal could be incinerated. The more you know! ⭐
Well, if you want more information: Biosecure Cow Cremator.
Note, there are two sizes available!
It kinda looks like a Traeger grill…
I saw that one zoo cooked up and ate a dead ostrich.
Interesting! There’s a butcher shop near me that sells ostrich. I think those ones are raised for meat though.
A local zoo has a “taxidermy department” and noteworthy animals are preserved or skinned and the skins sold to friends of the zoo.
Its kept very secret because it would be publicly unpopular. A friends dad has a mountain lion skin because he is a contractor who does a lot of work for the zoo and did a few jobs for them that NEEDED to be done basically for cost when they were suffering some financial troubles. They gave him the pelt as a Xmas present.
Source: Trust me, bro.
It is so hypocritical that it’s unpopular with zoo-goers that come to look at animals in cages, while wearing leather and eating other animals.
If you’re against exploitation of animals, please align your actions with your morals and live vegan.
“If you can’t be perfect you have no justification for being good”
Didn’t say anyone should be perfect, just apply your morals consistently
“If you don’t apply your morals consistently, don’t bother applying them at all”…?
Human beings are not rational actors. It’s a recipe for burnout and depression to walk around expecting them to be.
For anybody feeling the way parent commenter feels, do yourself a favor and let it go. We’re human beings. What we are is what we are.
do yourself a favor and let it go
I will stay angry as long as people are putting animals in gas chambers. The voiceless rely on people to stand up, they cannot end their own oppression.
You don’t need to be angry to speak and act.
I mean, maybe you feel like you do, but to anyone else reading this—that’s a trap.
Anger is poison.
Find a way to be happy and live well and stand for what matters to you.
you don’t have to be vegan to help stop animal cruelty. there are many, many humane and legit ways to help animals without veganism. not drinking milk or eating eggs doesn’t matter.
Stopping the cruelty from the root of it is the best way to do it.
eating eggs and milk is not animal cruelty
Calves being ripped from their mothers and male chicks macerated is not animal cruelty?
it’s called animal husbandry
Something doesn’t stop causing suffering because you call it a different name.
you act like thats literally the only way we can have milk and eggs. be real man.
The only way you can have cows milk is by impregnating cows. Google how this is done, there is tutorial videos on YouTube. It is horrible.
The only way people have egg laying hens is by killing the male chicks. This happens even with backyard chickens.
Be real man.
When I was in college the biology department got donated half of a lion for dissection by veterinary students. We got the back half. I feel like that said something significant about the quality of my education.
Who tf just donates half a lion?
How do you end up in a position where you have two halves of a lion to donate in the first place??
If you only have the space to display half a taxidermy lion, which half you choosing?
The left half
Step one involves owning a dead but intact lion, and a saw.
I think I remember some years ago a zoo fed a dead giraffe to the lions and people went absolutely insane about it. I’m not sure about the details anymore, they might have killed it because there wasn’t enough room in the zoo for it? Either way I didn’t get it, what do they think the lions are fed any other day? Animals that weren’t killed explicitly to become food? Some cows that couldn’t bear existence on this world anymore and offered themselves as lion food? Where is the difference?
… what do they think the lions are fed any other day?
I remember that, I thought it was poetic. I also remember the pearl clutching outrage.
Though a few visits ago at my local zoo two of the orangutans were beating the shit out of a seagull for fun, with naught outrage.
So there’s probably a double standard built-in.
No outrage, but any cheering?
Some very small children didn’t know whether to cheer or cry…
Considering how much meat is required to keep a lion fed per day, part of me thinks feeding it to lions would be sensible but on the other side it depends on making sure the meat is cleaned and that the animal that died didn’t die of a cause that would cause internal damage to the lion. Lions on the Serengeti feed on freshly caught food so their catch is usually pretty clean.
You’d expect the zoo staff to be fairly aware of the state their animals are in. They usually have vets coming in to check on every critter regularly.
Look man, we’re not giving it to you. Please stop asking.
There’s an urban legend in New York City.
One day, a patrol car in the Bronx finds a headless body laying in the street. The victim’s hands, feet, and skin was removed. There’s a massive response to find the deranged killer. Everything gets called off in a few hours, after the coroner realizes that it’s the body of a gorilla.
There was a hot dog factory in the area.
So what was the pretended point of the story? They were transporting the skinned gorilla body to be used in the hot dog factory and it fell of the truck or what?
well yeah
What do you do if you have a horse that dies or has to be put down? You call your neighbor down the road who has an excavator and ask him to dig you a horse sized hole. Then you bury it. If you don’t, you won’t want to leave your house for at least a week.
As someone who grew up with horses, in most cases the hole is dug first with a ramp, the horse is walked into the hole, then it’s euthanized.
Yep.
Hello traumatic memory I had been successfully repressing.
