Alex in Copenhagen

Hello everyone!

A couple of days ago I visited Copenhagen Zoo, which turns 150 years this year. The tickets were 130 dkk for an adult, and 70 dkk for a child. No student discounts, though, tut tut! But overall it was a pretty impressing place; they have lots of different animals  and many of them seem very happy there. Well, content, at least. Some of them, like the turtles, were there because they had been rescued from someone planning on selling them as gourmet food. Personally, I believe that eating a turtle is just the same as eating a cow, morally, apart from the fact that some turtles are rarer than cows. But in principle, eating animal a) is just the same as eating animal b) in my book.

Other animals also looked like they were enjoying themselves. The tigers, f.ex, had lots of space and seemed to be having a good time playing with a bright blue ball or gnawing on the leg of something-or-other. But then there were some animals that seemed to be very unhappy, and this upset me greatly. The polar bears were the worst, I think. There were two polar bears, and they were situated next to the ordinary brown bears. The brown bears seemed to be relaxing and having a good time, but the polar bears couldn’t stop pacing back and forth in the same fashion all the while I was observing them. They appeared to be completely stressed out, and reminded me of poeple waiting outside the operation room while some loved one was inside, and that the operation was very risky - do you get my drift? I also think that the polar bears had WAY too little space, after all, they’re BIG! They’re huge! They need their space! They just looked so unhappy. This kind of stuff really breaks my heart.

If you want to visit a zoo while in Denmark, I’d rather suggest Givskud lion park. I was there this summer and it was really a beautiful place. My mother (who is a frilance travel writer) has a blog post about it that explains it a bit more, and also directs you to the lion park’s web site.