BERLIN, GERMANY - A German man weighing 230 kilogrammes has died after refusing to go to the zoo for an x-ray because he was too heavy for machines designed for humans, daily Bild reported Tuesday.

"It sounded like they were trying to wind us up," Thomas Lessmann's widow Petra told the paper.

Complaining he was feeling ill and frequently losing consciousness, the 51-year-old Lessmann went to a clinic in Eppendorf, near Hamburg in northern Germany, which referred him to the nearby Hagenbeck Zoo.

His pride wounded, he refused to go and died 13 days afterwards, the paper said. The cause of death was unclear.

A spokeswoman for the clinic said that Lessmann was entitled to the same treatment as anyone else but added: "The upper weight limit for machines in human medicine is around 200 kilogrammes."