What choices after all does a zoological garden have with redundant animals?
It is the dilemma of the modern Zoo The zoological gardens claim to strive for the maintenance of animal species, for that reason the breeding programmes exist. It is a “Noah’s Arc” plan: when a species is about to extinguish in the wild, still some of them are being kept in the zoo and may be can be placed back in the wilderness someday. Therefore it is tried to establish animals that genetically look a lot like their congeners in wildlife. Placing such animals back into real nature is by the way no easy job: many projects woefully fail. The noble motivations on the other hand also result in high numbers of protected animals, such as tigers, becoming redundant due to the fact that they are not pure-bred. The largest gardens meanwhile brought back the number of bastards to a minimum, by way of export and euthanasia. Other gardens are still filled up with them. The vet: “A liger is the best example, that is a monster of nature. But our raccoons are also crap genetically, theirs is a dyi
