Environment

Move over Knut, there's a new cub in town

by Rob Peters | April 8, 2008 at 08:51 am

431 views | 20 Recommendations | 3 comments

With celebrity polar bear Knut now fully grown, the latest German polar bear idol--Flocke--comes none too soon. Fame in the animal world, it appears, is as ageist as Hollywood.

Flocke is already making public appearances and has Google abuzz with searches for shots of the white-haired wonder.

What do you think? Can she fill the shoes of her predecessor?

(Also, what's the deal with Flocke's mom? Chill out, right?)

The latest German polar bear to seize the attention of the nation made her first public appearance today.

Pictures and videos of four-month-old Flocke published on the Nuremberg zoo website have helped win her a place in the hearts of the German public, and today she finally made her debut in front of the world's press.

Flocke was rejected by her mother, just like the male cub Knut who became a sensation at Berlin zoo last year.

Staff separated Flocke from her mother, Vera, on January 8 after she threw the cub around the enclosure.

A day earlier, the zoo's other female polar bear, Vilma, had eaten her two cubs. Polar bears and other carnivores sometimes resort to such actions when their cub is ill, refuses food or dies.

"Not only Nuremberg, but the whole world has been in Flocke fever," the city's deputy mayor, Horst Foerther, told the Associated Press.

He said the cub had attracted millions of searches on Google since the zoo decided to raise her by hand in January.