This paper is an empirical exploration of death at the zoo. Death is mostly an abstraction that supports the narrative about animal extinction but its materiality is often nowhere to be seen. I will argue that most zoos' breeding activity is associated with biopolitical practices that attempt to disconnect birth and death in an effort to highlight its social function as a species conservation sanctuary and to offload the moral burden of animal death. The materiality of death is nonetheless a daily presence for the zoo’s workers, animals and visitors and needs to be justified accordingly to the specificity of its socio-cultural context and to a hierarchy of attachments to animals. This confrontation makes obvious the meshing of death and life.