by Playfuls Staff |
23rd March 2007
A cute polar bear who has become a media celebrity in Germany after being abandoned by his mother made his public debut on Friday.
Little Knut faced a battery of photographers [more] as he toddled into an enclosure at Berlin's zoo alongside the keeper who bottle-fed him over the past three-and-a-half months.
One step behind was German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel who has "adopted" the tiny creature to draw attention to the melting Polar ice caps caused by global warming.
Knut made media headlines after animal-rights campaigners claimed he should be put down because he was becoming too dependent on humans, a charge zoo officials denied.
But the cub appeared unconcerned by the media attention as he sniffed the ground, raised himself on a tree stump and licked the fingers of his keeper, Thomas Doerflein.
He even dipped is nose and paws into the enclosure's swimming pool, but refrained from taking a full dip, despite the urgings of schoolchildren visiting the zoo for the occasion.
Knut happily chewed on a piece wood in the enclosure, which is usually used by the zoo's brown bears, but was cleared for the cub's 30-minute appearance on Friday.
Zoo officials decided not to use the Polar bear enclosure where Knut's mother, Tosca, left him and his twin to die shortly after giving birth on December 5 last year.
Keepers rescued them and decided to raise the cubs themselves by feeding them milk from a bottle. But only Knut, the stronger of the two, pulled through after spending 44 days in an incubator.
Since then he has grown to a normal weight of 9 kilos and behaves like any other cub, although his fixation on humans was obvious on Friday when he kept seeking contact with his keeper.
The dependency on humans prompted animal-rights activist Frank Albrecht to complain that hand-feeding was not appropriate to the species and was a violation of animal protection laws.
"Legally speaking, the zoo should kill the baby bear. Otherwise it is condemning the bear to a dysfunctional life," he told the mass circulation Bild newspaper.
The idea that the fluffy white bear could be put down caused an outcry similar to that which occurred last summer when hunters in Bavaria shot dead a brown bear that escaped from its nature reserve.
Children demonstrated for Knut to be saved, newspapers printed readers' poems about him and Berlin's local television stations had almost daily reports on his well-being.
Last December, a two-day-old baby sloth was put down with a lethal injection in Leipzig zoo after it was rejected by its mother.
The general public will have their first chance to see Knut in the flesh from Saturday when he will be allowed into the open for two hours a day.
But officials said they would keep him apart from the zoo's other Polar bears because there was a risk he would be trampled on. Eventually Knut is expected to be transferred to another zoo.
A spokesman for Berlin's Zoological Gardens said other zoos, mostly in Europe, have already made enquiries about using him for breeding purposes when he reaches maturity.
Knut is the first Polar bear to be raised in captivity at Berlin zoo in more than 30 years. Of the 70 cubs born in captivity around the world over the past 50 years, only 34 have lived.
"Knut belongs to all Berliners," said the zoo's chief bear keeper Heiner Kloes. "We look on him as an ambassador for the city in the global discussion about climate change."
By Mike Swanson
© 2007 DPA
