Monday, March 19, 2007

My New Crush

Meet Knut:




Knut is a baby polar bear born in the Berlin Zoo. I heard about him today in this article from Cnn.com. There are huge debates about Knut and whether or not he should be killed. When he was born, his mother abandoned him and his brother. His brother died, but zoo officials intervened to save the little Knut. Animal rights activists and others are pissed because he should've been left to die, like he would've in nature.

If you really want to be an activist, let's talk about not putting polar bears in zoos in metropolitan European cities - surely that's against nature as well (for the record, this does concern me, but if polar bears are about to be endangered, it may be the only way for them to continue for the foreseeable future). If we are going to put animals in zoos vastly different from their natural habitat, how can we then just leave them to "nature's" devices? That just seems terribly wrong and misguided. Seriously. Why are Germans so crazy?

See more adorable pictures of Knut here and here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

polar bears are amongst the saddest of creatures i've ever seen in a zoo. they go green because their hair is hollow and fills with bacteria, and they pace. Relentlessly.

I agree with you Nik, we can't say that the life of a polar bear born in berlin is anything like as natural as one born in the wild.

I really don't want to have to do a post about this little guys lights getting snuffed out...