HOOFING IT: A lion cub at the Copenhagen Zoo munches on fresh meat. In 2014, meals for the zoo'a lions included a young giraffe euthanized and dissected at the facility.COPENHAGEN ZOO
In 2014, the Copenhagen Zoo grabbed the world’s attention by killing and publicly dissecting Marius, a healthy 24-month-old giraffe. Today, scientists still invoke Marius when talking about public engagement in the social media age, the role of zoos in society, and the complicated choices involved in animal management. Aarhus University’s Cathrine Sauer was at the zoo when Marius was put down, dissected, and fed to lions. But she wasn’t one of the hundreds of spectators. She was collecting data for her doctorate on the digestive function of giraffes.
Sauer, an animal nutritionist, defended her PhD thesis in November and has published several papers on the anatomy, digestive patterns, and intestinal microbiomes of giraffes in the wild and in zoos. “We found that overall, giraffes are ...
