German zoo shot baboons and fed them to predators
Nuremberg Zoo claimed that it had to kill the captive monkeys as a last resort to address an 'increase in conflict' caused by overcrowding.
The zoo's leaders were unable to find extra accommodation to house the red-bottomed baboons and decided to shoot 12 of them dead before feeding them to other predators in the zoo.
It was not immediately clear which animals ate the baboons, though Nuremberg Zoo also houses Asiatic lions and Siberian tigers.
Dag Encke, the zoo's director, insisted that his team spent years trying to figure out how to solve the issue of overcrowding at the baboon enclosure.
In the absence of any other solutions, culling was a 'legitimate last resort to preserve the population', he said, adding that the cull met all the requirements of Europe's zoo association.
But Pro Wildlife, a German animal rights group, reacted with horror to the news of the cull as all the animals had been in good health – before they were killed by Nuremberg's zookeepers.
'Healthy animals had to be killed because the zoo maintained irresponsible and unsustainable breeding policies for decades,' the group said.
Seven animal rights activists were arrested on Tuesday when they climbed the zoo's gates to protest the baboon cull. One protester glued her hands to the ground near the entrance.
The killing of healthy animals in zoos is often controversial and has previously sparked furious debates about whether the move is ever justified.
In 2014, a zoo in Copenhagen killed a giraffe named Marius because his genes were too similar to the other giraffes in the breeding programme. The giraffe was later dissected on a livestream video before being fed to lions at the same zoo.
Perhaps the most notorious killing of a zoo animal was the case of Harambe the western lowland gorilla, who was shot dead at Cincinnati zoo after grabbing a small child who had fallen into his enclosure.
While the decision to use lethal force was widely seen as justified, the case went viral and turned Harambe the gorilla into one of the most widely known 'memes' on the internet.
Some of the slain gorilla's most ardent supporters launched a satirical slogan, 'd*cks out for Harambe,' to raise awareness of his death. The slogan became so widespread in US internet culture at the time that it was even used by Hollywood action star actor Danny Trejo.
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