(15 Oct 2015) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4008027
A Danish zoo publicly dissected a year-old male lion on Thursday, pulling out its blood-red organs to show a few hundred people including children, an event met outside of Denmark with criticism and online protests.
Adult spectators brought scarves to their noses to ward off the pungent smell as they watched the dissection, considered by many in this Scandinavian country of 5.6 million to be an educational program.
The event was deliberately scheduled to take place during the annual fall school holidays.
A Brussels-based animal protection group, however, sharply criticized Odense Zoo, 105 miles west of Copenhagen, for killing three healthy young lions this year.
One of central Denmark's most popular tourist attractions, the Odense zoo has done public dissections for 20 years.
On Thursday, scores of children stood around a table where the zoo had displayed a stuffed lion cub next to the lion being dissected.
According to an Odense Zoo employee the male lion and its two siblings were killed in February because they were getting sexually mature and could have started mating with each other and the zoo wanted to avoid inbreeding.
They also could have killed each other because they would have been kept in the same enclosure, she said.
Zoo officials say the lions were killed after they had failed to find new homes for the animals despite numerous attempts.
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