Giraffe at Toronto Zoo dies under anesthesia during castration procedure

One of the giraffes housed at the Toronto Zoo died during a castration procedure on Thursday morning, the local attraction has announced.

The Toronto Zoo said staff were heartbroken and “devastated” to announce that two-year-old Matu, a Masai giraffe, had stopped breathing while under general anesthesia to be castrated.

“Our team did an incredible job carefully planning for this procedure for months,” the zoo said in a statement. “As we shared yesterday, with any procedure under general anesthesia we knew there would be risks, especially with large vertebrates.”

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The decision to castrate the giraffe came because zookeepers wanted to keep him with his mother and sisters instead of being isolated, the zoo said. In order to do that, he had to be castrated.

Masai giraffes are endangered animals, with fewer than 35,000 surviving in the wild. The zoo said the wild population of these giraffes had declined 50 per cent in the past 30 years, primarily because of hunting and habitat loss.

“Our entire Toronto Zoo team is in mourning and we know this will be difficult news to process for our broader Zoo community,” the statement continued, noting staff would be given access to grief counselling.

An autopsy is set to take place to determine the cause of death.

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