Danish zoo plans to publicly dissect lion

A Danish zoo plans to dissect a lion in front of children despite international outcry last year over a Copenhagen Zoo's decision to publicly skin and dissect a giraffe.

The Odense zoo in central Denmark says the 1-year-old female lion was put down nine months ago because the zoo had too many felines, according to the Associated Press. It said the animal, which has since been kept in a freezer, will be dissected Thursday to coincide with the schools' fall break.

"The reason we are dissecting it is that we believe there is a lot of education involved in dissecting a lion," said Michael Wallberg Soerensen, a zookeeper at the Odense zoo, according to multiple reports.

Soerensen added that the zoo has performed dissections of lions in the past without any negative reactions, The Guardian reported.

Soerensen told the AP that the Odense zoo, about 105 miles west of Copenhagen, has performed public dissections for 20 years and that they are "not for entertainment" but are educational.

"We are not chopping up animals for fun. We believe in sharing knowledge," Soerensen told the AP. "It is important not to give animals human attributes that they do not have."

The AP also reports kindergartens and schools often attend such events, and that there are no age limits for viewing the dissections.

"Children try to come as close as possible and ask lots of questions, 'Can I see the heart?' It's not horror at all," Nina Collatz, head of animal keepers at Odense, told BBC News. "Sometimes it's the parents who are more worried about the blood, the children are just very interested.

Collatz told BBC News that lions around nine months old can become a problem at that age and that fighting among cubs can become common. She said that as aggressive behavior was becoming more common a decision was made to try to send the lion to another zoo by entering it on a database widely used by institutions looking for "surplus" animals.

But, in this case, no other places wanted the lion, so it was destroyed. "Believe me, that is the last resort," Soerensen told the AP. "I would always prefer to send an animal to another zoo in Europe than having to put it down."

The lion's dissection comes after the Copenhagen Zoo euthanized a healthy 2-year-old giraffe named Marius in February 2014 because it was part of an international breeding program whose bylaws prohibit inbreeding in an effort to maintain the health of the stock.

Thousands around the world signed petitions demanding Marius not be euthanized, and the zoo's scientific director received numerous death threats.