The public around the world has gone into a frenzy over the recent euthanising of Marius the giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo. In case you’ve somehow managed to miss the story, Marius’s genes were considered to be well represented in the captive giraffe population around Europe and the zoo decided to euthanise Marius to allow them to focus on breeding other giraffes that would bring greater diversity to the gene pool.

Zoos around the world euthanise animals all the time, in fact humans euthanise animals on such a regular basis it’s suprising we actually still use the world euthanise. Australia recently euthanised an estimated 160,000 camels from Central Australia, Russia is rounding up and killing as many stray dogs as they can find (often with poison), it’s estimated over a hundred elephants are intentionally killed every year in Sri Lanka - that’s to name but a few examples.

This isn’t beginning to even mention the millions of animals we slaughter each year for food (often in inhumane ways) or the millions of others whose habitats we destroy, run over with our cars or simply kill for fun.

So with all this carnage around us, what makes Marius so interesting to the world? What makes Marius the exception that we have decided to care about?

It’s because we saw it - most of the death around us goes unnoticed, unreported and often uncared about. We look at Marius’ very public dissection, with photos constantly being shared on social media about this adorable giraffe whose life was unceremoniously cut short.

I wonder how the world would react if they saw what we were doing to the other animals? The millions that go unreported.

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