Zoo bombarded with death threats after feeding 12 healthy baboons to the lions

Staff at a German zoo have received death threatsafter feeding baboon carcasses to lions.

The healthy Guinea baboons were culled at the end of July after their enclosure at Tiergarten Nuremberg became overcrowded - with some of their remains being used for research, with the rest thrown to the carnivores. Last year, the zoo announced its plans after the population rose to 40.

The zoo was closed last Tuesday for the cull to take place, but activists who'd gathered outside were arrested as they tried to climb the fence. It comes after reports a comatose woman woke before organ harvesting surgery but 'docs operated anyway'.

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The zoo's director Dr Dag Encke has now come out to explain the facility's motive, saying they had tried to sterilise and rehome some of the baboons to no avail.

"We love these animals. We want to save a species. But for the sake of the species, we have to kill individuals otherwise we are not able to keep up a population in a restricted area," Dr Dag Encke told Sky News.

He revealed that an investigation has been launched after staff received death threats.

"The staff are really suffering, sorting out all these bad words, insults and threats," Dr Encke said. "The normal threat is 'we will kill you, and we'll feed you to the lions'.

"But what is really disgusting is when they say that's worse than Dr Mengele from the National Socialists, who was one of the most cruel people in human history. That is really insulting all the victims of the Second World War and the Nazi regime."

Josef Mengele - known as the "Angel of Death" - was a doctor and SS officer who performed grotesque and usually fatal experiments on Auschwitz captives.

The act of killing zoo creatures to feed to predators has been a practice sometimes used in zoos for years.

Similar outrage came in 2014 when Copenhagen Zoo euthanised a young giraffe and fed the carcass to lions to avoid inbreeding in the giraffe enclosure, which it said was its duty.

Head of policy at Born Free Foundation, Dr Mark Jones, said thousands of healthy animals are being killed each year in similar circumstances.

"It reflects the fact animals in zoos are often treated as commodities that are disposable or replaceable," he said.

It comes after a zoo in Denmark asked for owners of small, healthy pets to donate their furry friends asfood for its predators - and some people came out in favour of the idea.

The Aalborg zoo said it is trying to" mimic the natural food chain" of the animals housed there "for the sake of both animal welfare and professional integrity" and offers assurances the pets will be"gently euthanized" by trained staff.