Marius the giraffe made headlines all over the world after it was killed because its genes did not fit in with a sustainable breeding programme.

Cleansing of any kind has a bad smell to it, and when it came to reproduction, there was no place for natural selection in the giraffes’ enclosure. It was the zoo’s way or the highway to heaven. 

It seems that if Danish giraffes have a sex-life, they have to pay the price, which in this case was being taken out, dissected and fed to the lions – the giraffe’s place in the food chain anyway.

The episode felt like a Disney film. Marius (observers were quick to point out that naming the animals in these cases doesn’t help) was the animal protagonist who we perceive as a human as we wave goodbye to common sense.

We at The Post got an alarming number of hits on our website. We were cited in international news media such as US Today at length. Everybody stretched their necks like giraffes to see what would happen next.

All this happened while in Syria people of the same colour and nationality are at each other’s throats in a fight that even the locals have difficulty to explain. What would they make of this uproar about a giraffe?

There are some who might be grateful for the diversion, like the (some would say) suicidal Socialdemokraterne MP who has revealed all sorts of intrigues and spin about his/her fellow parliamentarians.

Not that we didn’t expect it to be somewhat colourful. It is the anonymity that is the devilish part.

In the meantime, they have to look straight into each other’s eyes. So now the focus is on the traitor not on the enemy. Again a twist of proportion.

What is the world coming to? It seems that heavy rain and storm can be attributed to climate change, although mostly the reports tell us that it was the worst in 30 years – so basically it has happened before. But again proportion is lost.

However, none of all this could muffle the hype of the exit of Marius.

Giraffes have been fed to the lions before. In Dyrehaven north of Copenhagen the gamekeeper shoots stags on an everyday basis before the big-eyed kindergarden kids show up to watch the animal being dissected before the choice cuts end up on our tables to be eaten. The world is however still standing on its right end.

The world is a brutal place, yes indeed. That cannot be helped. But we can help each other to prevent a giraffe sending the world population spinning out of proportion.

If we can learn that from Marius, he did not live and die in vain. He made a difference.