Like an organ donation from an accident victim, or the body of a patient donated for cancer research, death sometimes has a silver lining. The same is true at the zoo.

"Although Laoma has left us, we will adopt his attitude toward life, constantly improve ourselves with gratitude and take good care of every life," the obituary continues.

In another widely shared obituary released in October by the Xining Wildlife Park in the northwestern province of Qinghai, the zookeepers paid tribute to a deceased Pallas's cat: "Though (it) neither enjoyed the wilderness, nor breathed the air on the plateau, Sunsimiao (the cat's name) used his life to let us humans learn about, understand and take better care of the species."

China's only captive male Pallas's cat, the deceased animal, also provided an immortal monument in the study of the artificial breeding of the species, the obituary notes.