He's Knut (That Rhymes With Cute). Question Being, Is He Too Cute To Shoot?

MayorBob.

Posted to Etcetera on Sun Mar 25, 2007 at 06:49:05 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

Knut, the Berlin Zoo's polar bear cub, is one cute animal.  He's so cute and lovable that he's become the main attraction at the zoo and an object of adoration for Germans.  That adoration deepened due to the fact that his twin brother died shortly after birth, Knut's mother rejected him, and he's been hand raised by zoo personnel since.  Now he's just taken his inaugural public walk and the oohs and ahs are flying.  One woman, who has been following Knut's progress since birth expressed thankfulness that zoo authorities didn't follow the advice of one animal activist and have Knut killed.

Gott in Himmel!  Kill Knut?  An animal activist said this?  What is wrong with this picture?  Frank Albrecht is the animal activist and, yes, he suggests the appropriate thing to do with Knut is give him the needle.  Because Knut has been rejected by his natural mother and he is being bottle fed by zoo personnel, "it is a blatant violation of animal welfare laws."  Albrecht claims the bear will develop behavioral disorders and his advice is that "the zoo must kill the bear."  What has Albrecht, and a few other activists, upset is they don't believe the zoo should have stepped in after his mother spurned him.  What they believe the Berlin zoo is raising is a very large predator which will likely not mix well with other polar bears once he reaches adulthood.

Wolfram Graf-Rudolph, director of the Aachen Zoo, believes Knut shouldn't have been hand raised, "I don't consider it appropriate for the species that the little polar bear is being raised on a bottle."  However, Knut is too old to destroy now but someone at Berlin "should have had the courage to put him to sleep much earlier."  But, that decision wasn't taken and everyone (other than Albrecht and a few others) believe Knut "deserves to live."  It should be noted that, while Germany has some of the toughest animal protection laws in Europe, nothing in them prohibits humans from stepping in to save newborn animals who will one day grow into giant predators.  Besides, according to bear experts, Knut is a wild animal and "you can't domesticate a wild animal" and, as far as him not mixing well with other adult bears, "he is programmed to be a solitary animal."