Zoo Says Coronavirus May Force It to Feed Animals to Each Other

"We've listed the animals we'll have to slaughter first."

Feeding Frenzy

Zoos may have to resort to grim measures to keep afloat open during the coronavirus pandemic — including slaughtering and even feeding animals to each other.

"We've listed the animals we'll have to slaughter first," Neumünster Zoo's Verena Kaspari toldGerman newspaper Die Welt, as translated by the BBC. "At the worst, we would have to feed some of the animals to others."

"If it comes to it, I'll have to euthanise animals, rather than let them starve," she added.

Hard Times

Zoos have resorted to setting up livestreams so that animal enthusiasts can watch their favorite new animal babies grow up from a distance.

"Constantly we're thinking 'the visitors should be watching them live'," Kaspari told Die Welt. "We don't want the little pandas to be grown up by the time we finally reopen."

Grim Harvest

It's still unclear what exactly this barbaric feeding regimen would look like.

But zoos are bleeding money, as monthly costs such as heating tropical enclosures or penguins and seals' daily diet of fresh fish don't magically disappear without any human visitors around.

Sadly, some zoo inhabitants appear to be missing their humans. For seals that were usually fascinated by visitors, "for them now it's really boring," Philine Hachmeister, spokeswoman for the Berlin Zoo, told German news agency DPA.

READ MORE: Coronavirus: German zoo may have to feed animals to each other [BBC]

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