Poor Marius

UTmaniac said:
Not accept the new male lion and let four other lions live?
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It was already established that the parents were nearing the end of their natural lives anyway, so discount them from the equation.

The decision is whether the two cubs should have been killed, and I guess the Zoo favoured that a new fertile male can produce far more cubs with the females available than waiting for the two cubs to become of age.

Unfortunate situation overall really.
 
If there are lions being culled to make way for a newcomer, how can the whole pride be under threat of extinction? Apparently there are lions culled inn zoos regularly, according to the article.

That culled lion family were not in the wild, chances are they were all born in captivity, making the zoo(s) even more responsible for those animals until their death. You can hardly compare what happens in the wild in massive areas to existing cubs, to those born and raised in a zoo enclosure less then ~100x100m.

If there are a surplus of captive zoo lions, shouldn't the zoos be preventing reproduction (by sex separation, safe abortion if possible, cull cubs at birth)?

If I had an old fish (eg. one of my ~3.5 year old livebearers), what zoos are doing is effectively condoning me putting that old but alive fish in with my predatory catfish, because the catfish needs the same tank for its long term health.

The real issue here is, I should be a responsible animal keeper and never be in a situation where I have pets with insufficient housing to keep them for life when I buy them. Zoos are not being responsible enough for their animals.
 
UTmaniac said:
If there are lions being culled to make way for a newcomer, how can the whole pride be under threat of extinction? Apparently there are lions culled inn zoos regularly, according to the article.

That culled lion family were not in the wild, chances are they were all born in captivity, making the zoo(s) even more responsible for those animals until their death. You can hardly compare what happens in the wild in massive areas to existing cubs, to those born and raised in a zoo enclosure less then ~100x100m.

If there are a surplus of captive zoo lions, shouldn't the zoos be preventing reproduction (by sex separation, safe abortion if possible, cull cubs at birth)?

If I had an old fish (eg. one of my ~3.5 year old livebearers), what zoos are doing is effectively condoning me putting that old but alive fish in with my predatory catfish, because the catfish needs the same tank for its long term health.

The real issue here is, I should be a responsible animal keeper and never be in a situation where I have pets with insufficient housing to keep them for life when I buy them. Zoos are not being responsible enough for their animals.
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Zoos have breeding programmes to maintain a species and support its continuation. Some times a decision has to be made on what is best for the continuation of the species, and numbers are irrelevant (4 lions vs 1 newcomer).

The new lion is part of a breeding programme. The old ones were not - thus they had to be removed and since no one would take them they were euthanised. Likewise for the cubs, they would be killed by the newcomer, thus they had to be euthanised.

If the zoo does not do that then there will be no breeding and the zoo pride will die out.
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26356099

Or rather than killing four animals now, that appeared to be healthy (albeit the parents were old), the parents could die naturally and the cubs could have been used to breed separately in a few years if there really was a demand for new cubs.

If there are surplus lions to demand in the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria conglomerate, which the above article suggests there is*, they should doing all they can to prevent breeding and further surplus lions that need culling.

Those two female lions approaching breeding age are not going die for some time if they are healthy, as shown by the culled female mother who was 14. The male lion who took the space of this culled family will only be a few years old, again plenty of time to pass on his DNA.

* Despite legislation, the article suggests the death records of culled animals is not being recorded accurately i.e. distinguishing them from natural deaths, disease etc. If true, this is rather poor, considering how many decades/centuries different zoos have been in existence for.
 
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