Shareholders intervene in Chinese zoo

Recently a video depicting a donkey thrown to tigers as a meal at the Yancheng Safari Park in China went viral. Not zookeepers, but shareholders of the zoo were behind the cruel gesture. What is the reason why shareholders would dare doing something like this? These shareholders were particularly unhappy about the latest zoo performance and even more dissatisfied by the poor return they were getting on their investment due to a lawsuit that the zoo was facing. Their move was motivated by the profit maximizing formula, which simply entails minimizing the costs. In fact, one of the incriminated shareholders commented that at least they would manage to cut the costs of alimentation of the animals in the zoo by feeding wild-life animals with less attractive zoo animals, such as donkeys. According to National Geographic, this is just the latest accidents occurred in Chinese zoos. In fact, the recently accumulated wealth has led to the creating of several zoos and aquariums with the mere purpose of entertaining the visitors, rather than respecting and taking care of the animals living there. Despite the fact that this may cause positive short performance, it may have adverse effects on the future performance of these businesses due to questionable ethical standards and consequentially bad reputation.