Animal Activists: Kill the Polar Bear Cub

by Jordan Yerman | March 20, 2007 at 08:49 am

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This bear's only crime is being raised in a zoo, a situation over which the bear in question has no control. True, he cannot be released into the wild, but is that even an option at this point? Knut (the cub in question) is currently in a zoo; surely it makes more sense to, well, keep him there than to just kill him. I can see why certain activists believe that raising an animal in captivity is a crime against that animal's nature, but subsequently killing that animal is surely just another crime.

Animal rights activists in Germany have said that keeping the orphaned cub alive defies nature. When a cub is abandoned in the wild they fend for themselves and usually die.

Instead Knut -- or "Cute Knut," as the 8.7 kilogram (19 pound) bear has become known -- is pampered with comforts.

He is fed on a mixture of milk and chicken pure and sleeps every night with his teddy, Kuehne Ragnar a biologist at Berlin Zoo told CNN.

The head keeper likes to play guitar to Knut, sometimes serenading him with Elvis Presley tunes, he said.

"Knut understands some things. When the head keeper calls his name, he comes. Otherwise, he's like a little child. He has his own mind -- he's really a bear," said Ragnar.

The zoo's special treatment of Knut has raised the ire of some animal rights activists.

"Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws," animal rights activist Frank Albrecht was quoted as saying by the mass-circulation Bild daily.

"The zoo must kill the bear."