A video showing the dissection of a lion at a Danish zoo has sparked public outrage from animal rights groups and people who have described the actions as “a macabre spectacle.” On Thursday, a nine-month-old lion was laid in front of a group of spectators at the Odense Zoo in central Denmark after it was put down in February because the zoo failed to find another home for it. Since then, the lion, along with two others in the same situation has been kept in a freezer.

Last year, the same thing happened when the zoo put down a healthy giraffe and dissected it.

A crowd of around 350 people stood to watch the show, both adult and childern – some being as young as four years of age. The crowd held their noses and some even frowned as the educational process went down. Odense zoo guide Rasmus Kolind began the dissection by cutting off the lion’s tongue. He pointed out to the crowd:

Wouldn’t it be stranger if I were standing here cutting up an animal that smelled like flowers or something else?

Dead animals smell like dead animals. There’s not a lot to say about that.

But things got a little stranger when Rasmus (haha – In The Shadows) tried to recreate the lion’s roar by blowing into a tube they had inserted into the dead animal’s neck. Then, casually, he asked the crowd if anyone wanted an eye just before chopping off its head, and then skinning it.

Although the zoo came under attack by the Humane Society International in Europe who accused the zoo of “making a macabre spectacle out of a much deeper tragedy” the zoo responded that its important to highlight the widespread over-breeding of lions and “thousands of other animals” in zoos.

[source: telegraph]