By —Associated Press
BERLIN (AP) — A zoo in the German city of Nuremberg said it killed 12 baboons on Tuesday despite protests, capping a saga rooted in concerns that the zoo had too little space to house a growing group of the animals.
The Tiergarten Nürnberg zoo first announced plans to kill baboons it didn’t have space for in February 2024. It has said that it examined offers to take in some of the animals but was unable to make any of them work.
The plans drew criticism from animal protection groups. They also drew protests at the zoo, which said on Monday that it would have to start preparing to kill baboons. On Tuesday morning, it announced that it was closing for the day for unspecified “operational reasons.”
On Tuesday afternoon, police said seven activists climbed over a wall into the zoo, and one woman glued her hands to the ground. The group was detained a few meters (yards) inside the entrance.
Shortly afterward, the zoo said it had killed 12 baboons. The deputy director, Jörg Beckmann, said the zoo had chosen animals that weren’t pregnant females or part of studies, and that they were shot. Samples were taken for research purposes, and the bodies were then to be fed to the zoo’s predators.
Zoo director Dag Encke told a news conference that the killings followed “yearslong consideration.” He argued that they had become necessary to maintain a healthy population because having a group that had outgrown its accommodation and couldn’t be reduced by other means was pushing the zoo into conflict with animal protection laws.
Animal rights groups said they filed a criminal complaint against the zoo’s management, arguing that the killings themselves violated animal protection laws and that the zoo had failed in its breeding management. Laura Zodrow, a spokesperson for the Pro Wildlife group, said in a statement that “this killing was avoidable and, from our point of view, is unlawful.”
READ MORE: A quarter of the world’s freshwater animals are threatened with extinction, new research shows
The zoo’s population of Guinea baboons had grown to 43 and was too big for a house opened in 2009 for 25 animals plus their young, leading to more conflicts among the animals.
The zoo has said it did take steps in the past to address the issue, with 16 baboons moving to zoos in Paris and China since 2011. But those zoos, and another in Spain to which baboons were previously sent, had reached their own capacity. An attempt at contraception was abandoned several years ago after failing to produce the desired results.
Animals are regularly euthanized in European zoos for a variety of reasons. Some past cases have caused an outcry; for example, one in 2014 in which Copenhagen Zoo killed a healthy 2-year-old giraffe, butchered its carcass in front of a crowd that included children and then fed it to lions.
Too many male animals in zoos could hamper conservation of endangered species, warn scientists
University of Bath
The largest-ever study of over 2.6 million zoo birth records reveals skewed sex ratios in endangered species, from lemurs to elephants. The international team of scientists behind the study emphasise that it is vital that zoos take into account the ratios of males to females born in captivity when planning conservation projects and breeding programmes for endangered species to avoid the silent threat of having too many of one sex.
Biases in sex ratios of populations can dramatically increase the risk of extinction by limiting genetic diversity, increasing inbreeding and making the population more vulnerable to collapse. In captivity, a bias towards one sex can also cause problems with how to house animals safely to avoid conflicts.
Until now, there has been very little data collected on animals born in captivity. However, an international team of scientists led by the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath (UK) has published the most comprehensive study so far investigating the birth sex ratios (BSR) of animals in captivity.
Using evolutionary theory and advanced statistical methods, they found that BSR could be predicted by factors such as mating systems, sexual size dimorphism (differences in size between males and females of the same species) and brood size.
Their study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, investigated over 450 species of birds and mammals, including 30 endangered species such as Asian elephants, tigers and pygmy hippos with significantly biased BSRs.
They found that whilst lions have roughly equal numbers of males and females born, cheetahs have more male offspring and tigers have a bias towards females. Scientists were surprised to find that Asian elephants displayed a male bias, which is concerning given their matriarchal system where few males reproduce.
In mammals, mating system was a significant predictor of sex ratio bias, with monogamous species tending to produce more male offspring. For example, ring-tailed lemurs – the most common zoo animal in the world – form long-term pair bonds and showed strong male biases in zoo births.
In birds, they found that clutch size and sexual size dimorphism – the difference in sizes between males and females – were more predictive of BSR bias.
Bird species where the males were larger than the females tended to hatch more females in each clutch. Species with larger clutch sizes also resulted in a bias towards females.
“This is the largest study of birth sex ratios in zoo animals, giving us a much better understanding of the factors that shape sex ratio variation in different species,” said Oscar Miranda, first author of the study and researcher at the University of Debrecen (Hungary), who will join the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath this September to begin his PhD.
“Our findings show that even well-managed zoos may be silently accumulating sex biases that threaten the survival of endangered species.”
Professor Tamás Székely, from the Milner Centre for Evolution and Department of Life Sciences at the University of Bath (UK), said: “Our study highlights the need for zoos to collaborate more closely with each other and share data on their animals so they can manage the conservation and breeding of endangered species.
“No single zoo can prevent extinction on its own. But together, by monitoring birth sex ratios, we can turn a quiet demographic threat into a manageable challenge.”
Journal
Scientific Reports
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Article Title
Biased birth sex ratios of mammals and birds in zoos.
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