The Final Farewell

"No one wants to die.  Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.  And yet death is the destination we all share.  No one has ever escaped it... Death... is Life's change agent.  It clears out the old to make way for the new."

~ Steve Jobs

When I was in middle school, my social studies teacher gave our class an assignment.  We were each supposed to pick a controversial topic, outline the varied positions, and explain which one we supported and why.  Some kids chose abortion, some gun control, others the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (I chose public vs private management of endangered species, which was not a topic our teacher had any interest in… that paper did not get an especially good grade).  One boy in our class announced that he was going to do his paper on euthanasia… only I misheard him.  I thought he said “Youth IN Asia”, and wondered what was so controversial about kids in China and India.

It was the first time that I heard the word.  It certainly wasn’t the last.  It seems that every time I had a job interview for a zoo position, I was asked about my feelings on euthanasia.  When the time came for me to sit on the other side of the interview table, I asked it also.

When we discuss euthanasia, we are primarily talking about performing it on animals that are very sick, severely injured, or otherwise suffer from a poor quality of life that is unlikely to be reversed.  Most zoo and aquarium animals will live longer – in some cases, two or three times longer – than their counterparts in the wild.  Predators, starvation, drought, and inclement weather are replaced with a new series of killers – cancer, diabetes, organ failure, and other diseases.   The care of geriatric animals is one of the most rapidly developing fields in zoo animal husbandry, but in the end all animals must die, and in many cases it is through the agency of the zoo’s vet.  The question, most often, is when.

Opinions vary.  At many zoos, keepers privately accuse the vets of being too “needle-happy”, overly quick to suggest the use of euthanasia.  At my first zoo, the keepers dubbed the vet “Dr. Death.”  Some zookeepers (perhaps unable to stand seeing animals in pain or discomfort) are also quick to suggest euthanasia.  I currently work with one keeper who’s ready to put down any animal that so much as walks stiffly (which I find amusing in a morbid sort of way, since this guy can’t go three days without hurting himself.  If he were an animal under his own care, he’d probably have put himself down three times by now).  Other keepers are unwilling to face the realities of their animals’ mortality and try to force them to cling to life long after it should be obvious that the animal is suffering too much.  I don’t agree, but I do understand – a bear doesn’t get to be 35 years old without making some friends.

I’m always reluctant to suggest euthanasia myself.  It’s just so… final.  There have been plenty of times when I’ve looked at an animal and thought, “No way are you still going to be alive in the morning,” only to watch it completely rebound.  After all these years, I’m still reluctant to make the decision without consulting others.

Then there is the other side of euthanasia, the side that few people thought of until quite recently (Ah, I hear some of you say, I was wondering when we were going to get to the giraffe…)

There have been enough pictures of the dead giraffe floating around on the net.  I thought we could all look at some live ones for a change...

Zoos love the analogy of the Ark.  If zoo’s are an ark, however, they are a dangerously overcrowded one, one in which too few of the intended passengers are actually able to make it onboard.  Population management has been a primary concern for many zoo and aquarium professionals lately.  Gone are the days when zoos used to breed freely and unconcernedly, happy just to have babies to bring in the crowds.  Now, there are all sorts of questions that have to be asked:  Where will the offspring grow when they mature?  How related are the parents?  What is the genetic value of the parents – are their genes over-represented in the population? How many offspring are needed for a sustainable population?  These questions, in theory, keep the population healthy and prevent unrestricted growth from causing problems later on.

 

The problem is, accidents and miscalculations do occur.  You can’t guarantee that all of the breeding pairs you form will actually give birth to offspring (or that all of the offspring will survive), so you have to plan for extras.  But what do you do about a surplus?

I can’t help but think what happened at Copenhagen was avoidable.  I also don’t think this is as black and white as many people would make out.  Could another accredited zoo have been found to take the giraffe?  Animals that are sent to disreputable zoos have a way of turning up places where they shouldn’t – like in the hands of someone who can’t take care of them, or in a canned hunt (or, in the hands of someone who decides to breed even more giraffes).  Release back to the wild isn’t an option.  I don’t know what could have been done, but the giraffe was 18 months old, which makes me wonder if they couldn’t have used those 18 months to find another option.

At the same time, it feels a little hypocritical.  Do we really think that a giraffe values his life more than a cow, sheep, or pig?  One healthy giraffe was sacrificed for the population’s health.  We sacrifice how many animals bred solely for the purpose for our own consumption every day.  Are some animals okay to cull and others not?  Not many people would probably bat an eye at disposing of frog egg masses, or removing/pinning birds’ eggs to keep them from hatching.  What about rodents?  I can’t imagine the outcry if this involved a great ape…

This has been an uneasy thing to see playing out in the news.  I can’t say that I would have made this decision, and I would hate to see this become the norm.  I will say, however, that I think Copenhagen Zoo did the right thing in being very open, honest, and transparent about what they were doing and why (though I am still a little weirded out by all the smiling kids watching the giraffe dissection).  It took a lot of courage, especially in light of the backlash and death threats (which I never condone) that have resulted.

If zoo and aquarium professionals believe that what they are doing is right, they should never fear to share it openly.  Only by bringing things up to the light can honest discussions be had and decisions made.