I gave zoo my daughter's beloved pony Chicago so he could be fed to the lions – I don't see what all the fuss is about
Beloved horse Chicago 57 was taken to Aalborg Zoo in Denmark where he was killed and given to the hungry pride after months suffering from a nasty skin condition.
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This comes as the park issued a plea last week asking pet owners to hand over their unwanted animals to feed its captive predators.
Pernille Sohl, 44, runs a small farm in southwest Denmark for children with mental health struggles to spend time with horses.
In 2020, she determined one of her adored ponies needed to be put down after seeing his struggle with a form of eczema caused by mosquito bites.
His condition became so bad he was forced to wear a jacket and leg covers to protect his open wounds.
She decided to put the animal's fate in the hands of her then 13-year-old daughter who chose to "follow the food chain".
Pernille told The Times: "She had previously watched one of my horses being taken away by the vet to be euthanised, and it was a bad experience for her.
"She said that this time she wanted to follow the food chain. She wanted Chicago 57 to benefit other animals.'
The pony was then transported to the zoo where he was humanely killed with a shotgun - with Sohl right by his side.
Her experience was so positive, she even returned when another one of her horses sadly died last year.
Petting zoo worker beaten to death by KANGAROO after climbing into its pen to 'roughhouse' with animal
But this time she was turned down because the animal was too big to fit in the zoo's fridge so his body was turned into dog food instead.
With deductions on tax payments available and the cost of euthanizing horses being so high, there are also financial incentives to donating.
Helen Hjortholm Andersen from the Jutland, north Denmark, found herself in a similar position to Sohl whent her shetland pony, Paprika was left unable to walk after a seizure.
When she was quoted a "grotesquely high" price to pick up the horse, she took the animal to Jyllands Park Zoo, where like Chicago 57, he was humanely killed and fed to the animals.
Zoo asks for unwanted pets to be used as meat to feed captive predators so 'nothing goes to waste'
A ZOO has ruffled more than a few feathers after asking the public to hand over their unwanted pets to feed its captive predators.
Aalborg Zoo, in Denmark, asked for healthy small animals such as rabbits, chickens and guinea pigs to be used as meat for feeding time.
Keepers said each donor could donate up to four animals which could then be euthanised before being fed to the carnivore creatures.
In a social media appeal, the northern Jutland zoo said: "Chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs form an important part of the diet of our predators.
"Especially the European lynx, which needs whole prey that resembles what it would naturally hunt in the wild."
The zoo also announced it is open to taking horses, provided the proper paperwork is in order – with Danish law even allowing for tax deductions under certain circumstances for horse donations.
The operation has - perhaps unsurprisingly - drawn the ire of dozens online.
In response to Aalborg Zoo's initial plea, one user fumed on Instagram: "Shame on you."
Another said: "Asking people to send healthy animals that they don't want any more to you, so they can be slaughtered and fed to the zoo animals is one of the weirdest things I ever read."
Punctuating their comment with a green vomit emoji, a third wrote: "Go vegan and stop supporting zoos."
Aalborg Zoo has since closed its Facebook post to comments.
It wrote: 'We understand that the post awakens feelings and interest, but hateful and malicious rhetoric is not necessary. And we urge you to preserve the good tone.'
ZOO FURY
The controversy comes hot on the heels of a gruesome incident in Germany, where Nuremberg Zoo killed 12 healthy baboons due to overcrowding.
Keepers then fed their carcasses to lions, tigers, and wolves.
The baboons reportedly had their hands and feet removed before being served up in front of horrified visitors.
German zoo officials defended the culling as a last resort, but the backlash was swift.
This isn't Denmark's first incident with zoo-related fury.
In 2014, Copenhagen Zoo sparked massive outrage after it killed a healthy young giraffe named Marius over genetic concerns.
His body was publicly dissected as part of an "educational demonstration".
Meanwhile, in China, distressing footage of a shockingly obese panther sparked fury among animal lovers.
The video captured the moment a large black panther waddled around its enclosure, struggling to walk as its huge belly visibly hung out.
The big cat seemingly tried to hide behind a tree, but its bloated stomach made the usually svelte and streamlined animal easy to spot.
The shocking footage was filmed at the Chengdu Zoo in Chengdu, Sichuan Province in China and images were shared online on March 9.
The next day, the zoo told local media that the black panther was very old and a female aged 16-years-old.
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The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
I thought we'd entered the age of body positivity. Then came ‘shrinking girl summer' – is everyone getting smaller except me?
It is a balmy evening in early July. I have finally managed to get both of my small children to sleep and I am engaging in what has become a new and unhealthy ritual: scrolling through Instagram and trying to work out which of the people behind accounts I once followed for their body positivity content are now taking weight-loss drugs. I take a break from scrolling to pinch layers of fat between my thumb and middle finger, willing them – as I have since I was a child – to disappear. My fingertips trace the folds of skin that have appeared between my hips and ribs since my youngest son was born last summer, then over the raised red zigzags that have emerged all over my tummy since I first began growing children in 2021. By the time my partner has made his way up to our room, I am sobbing. His face bears the slightly pained but loving expression of someone who has seen this all before. Without a word, he draws me in for a hug before taking the phone from me. 'I just … ' I say between sobs. He nods as I finish my sentence '… wish it were me.' You'd be forgiven for finding this melodramatic. But at 37, I can count on one hand the years I have spent free from anxiety about the shape and size of my body – and two of them I spent pregnant. The rest of my time on the planet has involved either outright hating my body or – more recently, in the shadow of the body positivity movement – trying to accept and maybe even love it. But something is changing. Gone are the days when there was a deluge of messaging that told us to love our bodies no matter their size. When brands were falling over themselves in the who-can-shout-self-love-the-loudest Olympics. When Vogue, once a shrine to the skinny, declared three plus-size women were the new supers and plastered them on the cover. Instead, in a change I'd never have believed possible just two years ago, we have somehow been thrust back into a noughties-level skinny worship culture that is bringing up the same feelings I've been running from since I was a girl. If first there was Hot Girl Summer, then Brat Summer, I reckon we are now living through Shrinking Girl Summer. I say this with no judgment or malice, but simply to hold up a mirror to a pervasive trend. Quietly, everyone seems to have been getting smaller and smaller. For Alex Light, a British body-positive influencer, things had started to change even before the arrival on the mass market in the UK and US of GLP-1 agonist drugs used exclusively, via prescription, for weight loss (before this they were used mainly to treat symptoms of type-2 diabetes, including obesity). 'For a while there were subtle signs,' Light says. 'Fewer size-inclusive launches, less campaign imagery, more brands quietly reducing size ranges and a shift in which kinds of bodies were getting visibility and praise … but weight-loss drugs have made this shift impossible to ignore.' The signs are everywhere. Dozens of A-list women who were once (intentionally or not) symbols of what it means to rebel against diet culture are now changing shape dramatically. First Adele. Then Rebel Wilson. Lizzo. Meghan Trainor. Kelly Clarkson. Serena Williams. Mindy Kaling. And although some of these attribute their weight loss to strict diet and exercise, others are openly using the jabs: plenty of once overweight A-listers have been explicit about how much they've benefited from using the jabs, with Robbie Williams calling them a 'Christmas miracle' in a 2023 interview. Others, such as Queer Eye's Jonathan Van Ness and Oprah Winfrey, have spoken openly about their use – not, they say, in the pursuit of skinniness, but to get to what they feel is a healthier, more comfortable weight. Given this is such a personal and emotive subject for many, it is obvious the reasons for using these drugs to slim down aren't always black and white. But it is also clear there's a grey area between 'feeling fat' and being fat. And with stories of already-slim fashion editors queueing up to microdose the drugs in the run-up to fashion week, and celebrities using them to maintain skinny physiques, it's almost impossible to find an exit to the moral maze of who should use them and how. What is increasingly evident is that the lessons we've been taught in the past 10 years – you can be healthy in a bigger body, and some bodies are genetically meant to be larger – are being replaced with the old-fashioned idea that health equates with thinness. Over on TikTok, the SkinnyTok hashtag – on content praising thinness and starvation in the pursuit of it – was banned in June because of a surge in its popularity and glamorisation of disordered eating. Coupled with a return of a familiar prejudice that fat people are just lazy and greedy – a problem that needs solving, for the sake of the NHS – it feels bleaker than it has for a long time to be overweight. As a perennially plus-size woman, I am happy for anyone who manages to lose weight and keep it off. But, yes, I am also consumed with a furious jealousy, because I wish it were me. And it almost was – because I am not simply an observer of this sudden collective sprint towards thinness, but someone who actively tried to participate in it. Reader: I took the drugs, too. My experience with being bigger than I ought to be started as a child. I cannot say for sure when I was first made aware of my 'problem', but by the age of 10 I could confidently tell you how many calories were in a slice of Hovis versus Sainsbury's own bread, and was a whiz at inputting my school dinners into the Weight Watchers calculator I carried around in my pocket. My memory is hazy about precisely when the weight-loss conversation was first opened with me, but I know it has never been closed. The word 'conversation' is a stretch, given it has generally travelled in one direction only: towards me. The usual protocol is me receiving opinions about my body from people who, in either a personal or professional capacity, ask if I've ever considered losing weight, before gently suggesting I might want to, or demanding I do. This will come with recommendations to try this one thing this thin person determines is the reason for their svelte physique, never admitting their genes might have something to do with it. And my role in this little dance has been to swallow the shame I feel about my body, while apologising for the awkwardness my size seems to present for everyone else. And so the explosion of the so-called body positivity movement, on our social media feeds, fashion websites, catwalks and deodorant adverts worldwide, came as a shock to me. Having spent my whole life trying to be or stay thin, its messaging was at odds with my internal programming. While it felt amazing to see someone like Tess Holliday on the cover of Cosmo, and curvier mannequins in Nike's flagship Oxford Street store, it also felt at times like two steps forward, one step back. I wasn't surprised to witness fatness become the latest target of the rightwing press's war on 'wokeness', or explicit fatphobia, normalised by columnists 'debating' what they saw as the glorification of ill health. And while I loved the idea of appreciating your body regardless of its shape or size, I also knew deep down that I would probably never be able to do so myself. Nonetheless, I gave it a good go. I wrote fat-positive pieces, shared posts on Instagram with body positivity hashtags and enjoyed the availability of bigger clothes in brands I had longed to wear: Valentino, D&G, Ganni, Reformation. I fell in love with the fat influencers' 'big is beautiful' message. I loved seeing people celebrating their bodies, especially their perceived flaws. I even wondered whether I had actually managed to love my body in its overweight (and later clinically obese) state, but this illusion of acceptance would always unravel at the merest perceived criticism – from online trolls or well-meaning people in my life trying to help solve something I'd never identified to them as a problem. A few things did change for the better for me. Where once my internalised fatphobia had prevented me from believing fat people could be attractive, now seeing gorgeous curvy women in ads and on catwalks stretched my own definition of beauty to include people in bigger bodies. Another is that I fell in love with exercise, once it stopped being something gatekept by the skinny and muscular – with special admission granted for fat people only if they were explicitly trying to become thin. Instead it became much more common to see women above a size eight enjoy exercise for the sake of exercise – in my case, kickboxing, running and swimming. The last big shift was that, for the first time in my life, I was able to believe that, despite my inability to be thin, I was deserving of real and unconditional love, which allowed me to crack open a little door just enough to let a person enter who would become my husband and the father of my children. I am much more able to accept my body's appearance than I ever was before I met him. When GLP-1 agonists first came along, I instinctively felt afraid. And curious. Afraid because when Meghan Trainor was singing about how it's all about that bass and Lizzo was casting only plus-size dancers for her tours, I had allowed myself to imagine a future in which the issue of weight wouldn't be such a big deal. Curious because, well … I wondered if the drugs could help me. After having my second baby last summer, I gained weight. I was exhausted, moving less, eating more, and I felt out of control. So when articles started appearing around Christmas about how easy the injections were, how much weight you could lose and how few side-effects they produced, an idea started to form in my mind: maybe they could be the thing that slammed the door shut on conversations about my weight once and for all, and cut out the dreaded 'food noise' – a near-constant barrage of thoughts about food, even when not physically hungry, that had an obsessive grip on my psyche. The idea of removing that from my life wasn't just tantalising, but almost unthinkable. Imagine what I could do with all that extra brain space. I took the agonists and they worked – almost too well. I lost my entire appetite and about 15kg in a scarily fast time. Simultaneously, I experienced a resurgence of crippling anxiety (a known side-effect of Wegovy), leaving me foggy-headed, sweating profusely, sleepless and unable to think rationally or be fully present with my tiny children. It was truly miserable for me and my partner, who found it heartbreaking to see his formerly happy and engaged wife spiral back into the postnatal obsessive compulsive disorder we had both worked so hard to help me recover from after our first son's birth. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Not for the first time in my life, the choice of being thin and mentally unwell, or overweight and mostly contented, presented itself. There was only one viable answer: I needed to be well for my children, and if that meant mostly tolerating body dissatisfaction, then better the devil you know, right? The online company that had prescribed me the drugs with an eerie lack of checks and balances was stumped when I reported my side-effects, and told me to stop taking them. By this point I was so desperate to feel like myself again that the 3kg I regained pretty quickly, simply by eating more than nothing at all, barely registered. But as I felt more and more like myself, a new, almost grief-like feeling settled in the pit of my stomach; I felt defeated. The life raft on which I had pinned all my hopes of saving myself from a life of body hatred had arrived, and I had fallen spectacularly off it. It confirmed that the chronic lack of self-esteem I knew was likely the underlying cause of my mental health issues wasn't ever going to be magically solved. And that I would probably never be free of a life spent oscillating wildly between two extremes: happy or thin. You may be wondering where this all leaves me. Like many others, I suspect, it's extremely complicated. Do I, an obese person, wish I could tolerate the drugs better and lose a phenomenal amount of weight like seemingly everyone else has? Yes! Do I feel foolish for believing this one thing might solve all my problems? Absolutely. But there's another niggling sense, too: a feeling that I have been lied to, tricked into hoping an alternative world could exist in which people were more accepting of each other's bodies. I felt foolish for not recognising that what I will now refer to as fat-washing had only served one purpose: to make companies more money. I feel disappointed that the same people who told me I was beautiful despite my size have jumped at the first chance to be thin – and it makes me question their past sincerity. As Light says, 'When a creator builds a platform based on inclusivity and body acceptance, their followers see that as a safe space. When that same creator's body visibly changes, it can feel like a betrayal.' This has made me question my own integrity. I was out there spreading the good word of self-acceptance, too. Did I really believe what I was saying? I certainly wanted it to be true, and hoped it would be for others, and maybe that's the same thing. But I know if I had the opportunity to be thin, even if it meant upsetting others, I'd say yes, every single time, because I'm so bone-achingly tired of the feeling of not-enoughness (or too-muchness) that has lingered since I was a girl. Siobhan Murphy, a plus-size influencer whose @ interiorcurve socials focus on fashion and interiors, knows this predicament well. She was 'so nervous' to share her use of Mounjaro, a GLP-1 agonist, because she's 'always been a loud and proud advocate' for plus-size women. 'I worried people might feel let down or think I'd changed sides,' she says. 'But this wasn't about how I looked – I've always loved my body. It was about how I felt in it. My back kept bothering me, my knees were aching, my skin was dull, my eyes puffy … I made the decision to prioritise my health, and I'm glad I did.' Despite her apprehension, Murphy's followers 'have been incredibly kind and understanding. I think many were just happy I was transparent. There's such secrecy around this topic.' In an online environment, a lack of trust can quickly morph into something more sinister, encouraging people to look at everyone and wonder if they're on it, too, in a weird cat-and-mouse game that breathes life into an old habit of commenting on women's bodies that, as a society, we've fought to move on from. And as someone who's been round the block when it comes to weight gain and loss, body dysmorphia and the rest, I can tell you nothing makes you feel worse about yourself than scrutinising the appearance of others. As I scroll Instagram, seeing Shrinking Girl Summer in full bloom, I can't help but pine for what could have been: a smaller body and what I assume would be an easier existence than one spent feeling the need to justify and defend myself all the time. But I find reasons to be hopeful when I see new body positivity pioneers pushing back against this fresh era of fatphobia. Women such as Lena Dunham, Meg Stalter, CMAT and Lola Young, who are all having their moment in the sun, without feeling the need to shrink in order to do so. Murphy says she sees the community at a crossroads. 'A new wave of medical intervention is changing the conversation and it has raised many questions about what body positivity truly means. For me, it was never just about size – it's about acceptance and kindness toward yourself and others. Whether you stay the same size, gain weight or lose it, the core message should remain the same: your worth isn't defined by your body.' I am pretty committed to losing some weight; not a lot, but some. More than anything because I want to feel better in my body. My pursuit of being smaller is not motivated by a belief that being big and being beautiful are mutually exclusive. Maybe it will always be something I can appreciate as being true for others rather than myself, but in the meantime, I'll do all I can to embed in my children's own programming the notion that their weight really is the least interesting thing about them. If there's one thing I've learned from having kids, it's that the best way to teach them something is to embody it. I've never felt a stronger urge to step away from the scroll hole and build more solid self-esteem from the inside out. Maybe I'll never learn to love my body fully, but that doesn't mean I'll give up trying. This article was amended on 11 August 2025 to clarify that while drugs like Mounjaro have inhibitory qualities, GLP-1 drugs are more accurately called agonists, not inhibitors.
Reuters
2 days ago
- Reuters
As Novo Nordisk ramps up lawsuits over Wegovy copies, investors ask where is Hims?
LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - In Novo Nordisk's ( opens new tab legal fight against dozens of U.S. pharmacies and companies selling cheaper copies of its weight-loss drug Wegovy, one name remains conspicuously absent: Hims & Hers (HIMS.N), opens new tab. The high-profile telehealth company continues to sell compounded versions of Wegovy at lower prices, testing the limits of federal restrictions on such copies and contributing to weaker sales growth for Novo. In June, Novo accused Hims of violating its intellectual property and endangering patients, scrapping a brief arrangement enabling them to sell Wegovy directly to consumers and raising expectations of litigation. A Novo spokesperson said the Danish drugmaker was not ruling out further legal action after announcing new lawsuits against 14 small pharmacies, telehealth providers and weight-loss clinics this week, but declined to comment on Hims. The drugmaker has filed more than 130 cases in 40 U.S. states. A spokesperson for Hims defended personalization of medicines as the future of healthcare, saying patients and providers use their platform to make clinical decisions. "Investors are happy to see Novo getting more aggressive on the litigation front, but remain puzzled as to why they haven't confirmed that they are filing or have filed litigation against Hims yet," said Barclays analyst Emily Field. Legal experts say Novo's expanding litigation against smaller telehealth players could add pressure on a company like Hims to negotiate a settlement or help the drugmaker test out strategies. At the same time, the fact that Novo and Hims had a prior collaboration may complicate legal action. "Business happens in the shadow of the law," said Robin Feldman, a professor at UC Law San Francisco who has written books on the pharmaceutical industry and its intellectual property battles. "Sometimes companies file against smaller players as a shot across the bow, a way to rattle the larger players." The U.S. Food and Drug Administration set a May 22 deadline for compounding pharmacies to cease mass-producing copies of Wegovy, a practice allowed only when a drug is in shortage. Hims says it still offers personalized versions of Wegovy, in doses not manufactured by Novo, that better suit individual patient needs. The telehealth provider argues that individualized dosing remains legal under compounding rules. Compounding laws 'are just vague enough to allow for different interpretations, and the interpretation that matters – that of the courts – has not been provided to our knowledge,' said TD Cowen analyst Michael Nedelcovych. Novo's cases against smaller compounders could shape how courts interpret those boundaries, said Gaston Kroub, a partner at patent litigation firm Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov. 'This is an untested set of affairs,' said Kroub. 'If you want to train for a heavyweight championship fight, you start sparring with lighter opponents.' In addition to trademark infringement, Novo has accused pharmacies of steering people toward compounded Wegovy by interfering with the relationship between clinicians and patients. Josh Gerben, an intellectual property attorney, said the fact that Hims and Novo had a prior business relationship will complicate any claim Novo could bring.
Reuters
2 days ago
- Reuters
Exclusive: Medical journal rejects Kennedy's call for retraction of vaccine study
Aug 11 (Reuters) - An influential U.S. medical journal is rejecting a call from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to retract a large Danish study that found that aluminum ingredients in vaccines do not increase health risks for children, the journal's editor told Reuters. Kennedy has long promoted doubts about vaccines' safety and efficacy, and as health secretary has upended the federal government's process for recommending immunization. A recent media report said he has been considering whether to initiate a review of shots that contain aluminum, which he says are linked to autoimmune diseases and allergies. The study, opens new tab, which was funded by the Danish government and published in July in the Annals of Internal Medicine, analyzed nationwide registry data for more than 1.2 million children over more than two decades. It did not find evidence that exposure to aluminum in vaccines had caused an increased risk for autoimmune, atopic or allergic, or neurodevelopmental disorders. The work is by far the best available evidence on the question of the safety of aluminum in vaccines, said Adam Finn, a childhood vaccination expert in the UK and pediatrician at the University of Bristol, who was not involved in the study. "It's solid, (a) massive dataset and high-quality data," he said. Kennedy described the research as "a deceitful propaganda stunt by the pharmaceutical industry," and said the scientists who authored it had "meticulously designed it not to find harm" in a detailed Aug. 1 opinion piece on TrialSite News, an independent website focused on clinical research. He called on the journal to "immediately retract" the study. "I see no reason for retraction," Dr. Christine Laine, editor in chief of the Annals and a professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, said in an interview. The journal plans to respond to criticism the article has received on its website, Laine said, but it does not intend to respond directly to Kennedy's piece, which was not submitted to the Annals. The lead author of the study, Anders Peter Hviid, head of the epidemiology research department at the Statens Serum Institut in Denmark, defended the work in a response post to TrialSite. He wrote that none of the critiques put forward by Kennedy were substantive and he categorically denied any deceit as implied by the secretary. "I am used to controversy around vaccine safety studies - especially those that relate to autism, but I have not been targeted by a political figurehead in this way before," Hviid said in an emailed response to Reuters. "I have confidence in our work and in our ability to reply to the critiques of our study." Kennedy had a number of critiques, including the lack of a control group, that the study deliberately excluded different groups of children to avoid showing a link between aluminum and childhood health conditions - including those with the highest levels of exposure - and that it did not include the raw data. Hviid responded to the criticisms on TrialSite. He said some of the points were related to study design choices that were reasonable to discuss but refuted others, including that the study was designed not to find a link. In fact he said, its design was based on a study led by Matthew Daley, opens new tab, a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, which did show a link, and which Kennedy cited in his article. There was no control group because in Denmark, only 2% of children are unvaccinated, which is too small for meaningful comparison, Hviid added. The data is available for researchers to analyze, but individual-level data is not released under Danish law, he said. Other prominent vaccine skeptics including those at the antivaccine organization Kennedy previously ran, Children's Health Defense, have similarly criticized the study on the Annals site. TrialSite staff defended the study for its scale, data transparency and funding while acknowledging the limitations of its design, a view seconded by some outside scientists. Laine said that while some of the issues Kennedy raised in his article may underscore acceptable limitations of the study, "they do not invalidate what they found, and there's no evidence of scientific misconduct." An HHS spokesman said the department had "no further comment than what the secretary said."
