Can I Be Fed To Animals When I Die

We know that all dogs go to heaven, but what happens to the Louisville Zoo animals when they die?

This Curious Louisville question really has a variety of answers — ranging from the zoo's educational programs to a baby puddle on the rooftop of a Bellarmine University science building.

Dr. Zoli Gymesi is the senior staff veterinary at the Louisville Zoo.

"Permit me start by proverb that any time we lose a zoo animal, it'due south a sad day," Gymesi said. "But with whatever loss, we try to maximize what we can larn from their death."

He said that the zoo has a strict set of procedures after an animal dies.

"Nosotros have a dedicated necropsy room, and in the necropsy room is where nosotros would exercise post-mortem evaluations," Gymesi said. "That's gross dissection of the fauna after it has passed, you ordinarily get a skillful feel there, and and so you harvest tissues that gets sent off to a veterinarian pathologist for microscopic evaluation."

At that point, there is a full pathologic evaluation of the fauna — cause of death, what kind of problems it had, and what zoo staff can learn from the death.

"Hides and basic, sometimes we volition save some of those remains to use in our educational programs," Gymesi said. "Later on that, whatever remains of the animals will be cremated. In some cases where cremation is not practical, like with real megavertabrates — big animals — they might become buried on zoo grounds."

Gymesi said the animal graves don't have markers because it'southward more near the staff members who had worked with the animals being able to pay their final respects or visit if they choose.

Creative Commons

Louisville Zoo entrance.

Simply sometimes the remains don't stay on zoo grounds.

Gymesi said the zoo has working relationships with a number of researchers, universities and labs across the country; ane example is Dr. David Porta at Bellarmine University.

"Dr Porta studies fracture biomechanics and bones," Gymesi said. "Sometimes we will save limbs from animals that have passed and he will use that in his study."

And this relationship is the ground for i of the biggest (or, ahem, tallest) campus legends to come from Bellarmine University: that a giraffe carcass somehow ended up stored on the rooftop of Pasteur Hall. By fashion of disclosure, I attended Bellarmine, which is where I first heard this story.

"At some point in the end of March 2004, a very large male giraffe passed abroad," Porta said. "Keep in mind, this giraffe was in its 20s, which is very onetime. Out in the wild, a giraffe is going to slow downward and some lion is going to take it out of apportionment. In a zoo setting, these animals tin can survive much, much longer."

And this means, Porta explained, they start to run into the problems of old age.

"Such as hip issues," Porta said. "When it finally passes away, I'm sure a lot of people were doing research on the beast. At some point they contacted me, and said if you'd like to go some of the basic for written report … then we were very excited to do that."

He continued: "And while there, they asked if I would similar to take the pelvis. They were curious about the hip problems with this giraffe, then they were very kind and asked if I would similar to assistance them expect at the hips."

Porta left the zoo that twenty-four hour period with several giraffe limbs and a pelvis, which has a diameter of about three anxiety and weighs 100 pounds.

But there was a problem.

"This nonetheless had the skin on and the muscle tissue, so I had to 'deflesh them' is the term we use, to get at the bones so we could see what happened with the hips," Porta said.

And he needed a way to do this that would be quick and relatively mess-gratis on campus.

"I bought a pocket-size wading pool and I had that placed on the roof of our science building," said Porta. "We've got some actually great concrete constitute folks here at Bellarmine that are really game for anything. Near of those guys know me, so when I arroyo them, they know information technology's going to exist something weird. Then we used one of the cranes to lift the pelvis upward onto the roof and set it in that pool."

Courtesy Bellarmine University

Pasteur Hall at Bellarmine University

With the help of the late spring sun and some flies, the 'defleshing' process was off to a good start, merely and so Dr. Porta got a call.

"Well, while the giraffe was decomposing, this got to be May and I had taken a little time off, I'd left town, and I got a phone call from our secretarial assistant and she said. 'There'southward a problem in the science building, there are flies coming in through the vents," Porta said.

Evidently, Porta said, there was a stack vent on the roof that wasn't fully sealed. Flies swarmed a summer class. A call was made to the university president'south function. The vent was capped and a few years after, the school got a new science building.

The story has grown in the 13 years that have passed; when I was a student, I heard a variation that in that location were multiple giraffes in several baby pools. A version that's a little closer to the truth is told on campus tours and the story will be documented in an upcoming volume of university history.

Simply as outlandish as the giraffe story is, Porta said he learned something very emotionally important from it when he took the basic dorsum to the zoo after examining them.

"I have to tell you, the zoo has some astonishing people over there," Porta said. "They are really caring people, they work very hard. They develop relationships with these animals, and that was something I wasn't enlightened of since I work mainly in a human loonshit."

He continued: "When I took these bones dorsum over to show what had happened in the hips, there was probably a dozen people in that location — zookeepers and various staff and I mean, they were silent when I walked in with these bones. To them, they were learning what happened to their friend."

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Source: https://wfpl.org/curious-louisville-what-happens-to-zoo-animals-when-they-die/

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