Danish Zoo Wants Your Pets
Aalborg Zoo wants your pets. Not to rehome them. To kill them and feed them to their captives.
They’ve dressed it up in all the right language, of course — “natural behaviour,” “ethical reuse,” “gently euthanised.” But make no mistake: this is a disposal scheme. You provide the body, they provide the justification.
They want rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens. Horses, if you’ve got them. And they’ll even sweeten the deal with a tax deduction — because apparently death is a business, and kindness is an expense.
This isn’t a case of animals dying despite human care. This is death as human care. It’s billed as enrichment for predators who have no say in where they live, what they eat, or how often they’re ogled by tourists. The zoo claims it’s a “responsibility” to mimic the natural food chain. But nothing about this is natural.
In the wild, a lynx doesn’t hunt pets surrendered in cardboard boxes. A tiger doesn’t rely on a social media appeal to eat. No animal in a “natural food chain” waits for weekday donations between 10am and 1pm.
This isn’t nature. This is theatre.
It’s theatre for humans who want to believe that locking up wild animals is somehow justifiable if the décor looks enough like the wild they were stolen from. The predators don’t get a choice. The prey didn’t either. And somehow, the people facilitating this think they’re restoring balance — while collecting gate fees and Instagram likes.
One comment on the zoo’s post said it best: “Imagine giving away your pet as fodder — it hardly gets more disrespectful and unworthy than that.” But the zoo turned comments off. Because pretending to care about naturalism is easier when you don’t have to face people calling out the performance.
Still, a few did defend the scheme. One woman described her experience donating her horse as “peaceful,” with “sweet staff” and gratitude all around. We’ve apparently reached a point where killing a horse for zoo meat can be marketed as a serene bonding moment.
None of this should surprise anyone paying attention. Zoos have long maintained the illusion that they’re centres of conservation. But the reality is they’re warehouses for the wild, painted with educational slogans and propped up by broken logic. Animals don’t thrive in cages just because you throw them a whole rabbit. And no predator benefits from “natural” behaviour when every other part of their life is a prison.
This isn’t about the lynx. Or the lions. Or the tigers. It’s about us — again. About easing human guilt by recycling the bodies of other animals into some warped display of ecosystem cosplay.
You can almost hear the internal monologue: “It would’ve been euthanised anyway.” “At least this way it’s useful.” “It’s just how nature works.”
But nature doesn’t build cages. Nature doesn’t ask for healthy animals. Nature doesn’t offer tax incentives.
This is how supremacy hides itself — behind words like “natural,” “necessary,” “nothing goes to waste.” It pretends to honour the animal while using them as resources. It pretends to educate while desensitising. It pretends to care while cashing in.
And it’s not limited to Aalborg Zoo. Zoos across Europe and beyond routinely kill so-called surplus animals, whether for display, breeding, or “enrichment.” Animals born into captivity are treated as excess inventory. Their bodies become props. And if you're uncomfortable with that, zoos will assure you it’s for conservation. That their cages are actually lifeboats. That their killings are “gentle.” But if you find yourself explaining why a healthy rabbit should be killed and fed to a lion in a cage, maybe it’s not the lion you’re defending. Maybe it’s the cage.