Twelve baboons were shot dead at a German zoo because there was not enough space in their enclosure.
Tiergarten Nürnberg zoo has sparked outcry from animal rights groups after culling the healthy animals and feeding them to predators.
Animal rights groups fear that apes and monkeys could be culled in the UK as zoos struggle with overpopulation.
The Guinea baboons had continued to breed and breed despite the zoo implanting contraceptives in the females.
As the number of animals reached over 40, which is 25 more than the supposed limits inside the complex, they began to fight more.
The zoo said they had no option to kill the baboons after no alternative housing could be found, despite other zoos offering to take them on.
The baboons were then shot individually with a bullet.
The females were first examined under anaesthesia to check if they were pregnant, a process which killed two females before they would have been shot.
There are not 26 alive baboons left, which is still three too many.
The zoo’s director Dag Encke called the culling a ‘legitimate last resort to preserve the population’ after ‘yearslong consideration’ of how to solve the problem.
But animal rights groups are up in arms over the decision after many chained themselves to the baboon enclosure over the weekend.
Protestors climbed over the zoo’s fence on Tuesday after it closed for a day.
Now, the Tiergarten Nürnberg faces the prospect of criminal investigation after 100 criminal complaints were received by the city’s prosecutor’s office.
The Nuremberg zoo is not the only one to kill healthy animals.
Many zoos specifically breed animals for feeding to lions, tigers and other large carnivores.
The German Animal Welfare Association calls it ‘common practice’ for surplus zoo animals to be killed and given to other animals to munch on.
Laura Walton, campaigns manager at Freedom for Animals, told Metro that ‘healthy animals are routinely killed across the zoo industry when they are deemed “surplus” to requirements’.
Chris Lewis, Born Free’s Captivity Research and Policy Manager told Metro he feared the ‘tragic situation’ at Tiergarten Nürnberg could be repeated in UK zoos due to overpopulation.
‘Sadly animals in zoos are treated as commodities that are replaceable.’
Lewis said UK zoos, as well as those in Europe, are struggling with having ‘too many male’ orangutans, chimpanzees and other monkeys in their breeding programmes.
He added: ‘They are struggling with where to put them.
‘One of the options is that they may face a future where they are culled as well.
He said this overpopulation is being caused because zoos are housing these species in social structures’ not replicated in the wild.
The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), which co-ordinates the breeding programme in Europe, permits zoos to cull animals under a number of conditions.
This includes, when an animal population’s demographic or genetic viability is at risk, when an animal is disruptive to the social group or poses a threat to human safety.
‘The viability of the overall population may, under certain conditions, take precedence over the right to life of a specific individual animal,’ their policy statement adds.
Guinea baboons are endangered animals, with around 280 living in ten European zoos.
They live in the wild across African countries Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Mali.
But taking the animals back to Africa was not an option, because they’d introduce germs that would have killed off the already wild baboons.
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