Marius is too old to be part of his original herd

Marius has reached the age of maturity, where he is supposed to leave the herd and find a new one — in fact, his presence have caused problems in the herd (link in Danish, but you read the translated version), including rising tension with his biological father in the zoo, and the risk of inbreeding with his sexually-active mother and female siblings.

Marius is 18-months old, and is too old to be considered a baby giraffe. In the wild, male juveniles at the age of 15 months will leave their herd and form new all-male herds, while their female counterparts will depart 3 months later and yet remain in close geographical distance. Although male giraffes are non-territorial, they will attempt to establish hierarchy through a ritualised act called necking (Simmon and Scheepers, 1996), posing a risk of injury or in some cases, death.

Two male giraffe necking in the wild.

Genetic redundancy and risk of inbreeding

Given that Marius genetic make-up is well-represented among the giraffe populations in zoos, Copenhagen Zoo is banned from transferring the animal, by an European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) mandate, to any affiliated zoos. This makes sense because inbreeding is a highly dangerous and genetically-unsound option, as it risks causing repressed inherited diseases to re-emerge in future generations.

By allowing Marius to contribute his share of genes to the pool, we are creating an unnecessary risk for future generations of giraffes that may suffer from preventable genetic ailments.

Now you might scream, this is eugenics!

Yes, it is eugenics. Undenaibly so, because eugenics is about the selection of breeding partners to retain desirable heritable characteristics. What many people mistakenly associate the term with is Nazi’s eugenics propaganda, where they attempt to breed “desirable” traits based on skin colour, physical disability (or lack thereof) and ethnicity, most of which lack any scientific basis — i.e. who says Caucasians are more desirable than Africans, for example? Nazi’s eugenics not only has very little scientific credibility, but also arbitrarily categorizes people into desirable and undesirable groups, therefore is, in fact, a corruption of the original intention of eugenics.

However, we are scaling a little bit of a slippery slope if we blithely gallop in on our moral high horse and accuse Copenhagen Zoo of endorsing and performing eugenics. If you have a pet dog in your household, for example, think twice — you are actively and indirectly supporting eugenics, too. Different breeds of dogs arose because breeders selected sexually-mature dogs of desirable traits and mated them, and did the same for their subsequent offsprings in order to arrive at a stable, desirable trait. The same holds for things we consume at the dining table — from the juicy steak that you ate at a fancy restaurant last month, to the perfectly seasoned caesar salad you made at home. These organisms, be it the cow, or the rucola, have been bred over many generations, by means of manual labour or genetic modification, for desirable traits.

So, who are we to accuse Copenhagen Zoo of eugenics?