Berlin's Polar Bear Row

Should Zoo's Orphaned Polar Bear Cub Be Raised By Humans?

(CBS)  Make no mistake about it: Knut is one very cute bear.

The four-month-old polar bear is the star of the Berlin Zoo, an international celebrity and, as CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar reports, the center of a bad-tempered row about whether he should have been allowed to live.

Knut is the first polar bear born in Germany in thirty years and that alone should guarantee fame.

Then there's the story of his birth to be considered. He was abandoned with his twin by their mother Tosca. She's a one-time circus bear, a first-time mother. She left her cubs on a rock to die.

Scooped up by zoo keepers with a fishing net, the twin died. Knut spent forty-four days in an incubator. He was bottle fed every few hours by his devoted keeper, and mother-bear substitute, on a mix of baby formula and cod liver oil – now he gets a little chopped up chicken.

Knut has thrived.

With web pages, podcasts, and weekly updates on the local news, Germans are entranced.

Animal rights activists have been enraged. On the front page of newspapers, they have argued nature should have taken its course – better a lethal injection than a bottle-fed Knut, in danger of losing his inner bear.

The zoo has offered assurances to a horrified public that it has nothing but Knut's best interests at heart. Even the animal rights activists acknowledged it would be cruel to put him to death now.

As for the bear, he makes his debut in front of an already adoring public later this week.

[puzzler125]

Obviously the little dear will have to live in a zoo but I have a feeling he'll be okay. There's absolutely NO reason to put him to death. He's sweet now, and very cute, but soon he will be a more "normal" polar bear and need to live in a protected environment where he'll be fed and properly cared for.

[brightstar11]

The polar bear KNUTE should be kept alive by all means, even if he is given to a zoo in the U.S.
We need to help him stay alive. Contact the animal right groups in his behalf.

[sclaires]

I have been following the progress of Knut ever since I first saw the pictures of him. Right now he is a bundle of fur that is growing. His keeper has the marks to prove that Knut is learning how to be a polar bear even though it is slowly. At this time polar bears could be considered an endangered species due to global warming and to have a baby born in a zoo is all the better. Knut is the symbol of Berlin and when he gets bigger, i.e., a teenager, he will learn what it is like to be a polar bear. There are a lot of things that are instictive in animals and as he gets older, he will realize that he is a polar bear and not a human. It won't be too much longer before Knut is eating normal polar bear food and is off his special formula. It is bad enough to have to put down a pet but an animal like Knut should be allowed to live to the longest life possible.

[michel294eve]

So, let me get this straight. It's wrong to smack a dog, but by all means let's kill an endangered polar bear because he was abandoned by his mother and humans have intervened. What is wrong with this picture? The animal rights people don't always make a lot of sense to me.

With this thought process, I guess we should kill all of the dogs and cats that have become dependant on people to live as well. After all they used to be wild animals too, right?

[michel294eve]

So, let me get this straight. It's wrong to smack a dog, but by all means let's kill an endangered polar bear because he was abandoned by his mother and humans have intervened. What is wrong with this picture? The animal rights people don't always make a lot of sense to me.

With this thought process, I guess we should kill all of the dogs and cats that have become dependant on people to live as well. After all they used to be wild animals too, right?

[shell777-2009]

The right thing to do is to help any person or animal who is in need. If we are not supposed to interfere with nature then we should stop hunting and polluting...

[nyla02-2009]

Would you want someone to put YOU to death if your Mother left you? How cruel is that? Let the cub live for christ's sake!!!!

[rnitti]

I'm utterly astonished by this. For those who say that it's an unnatural habitat...zoos are unnatural habitats. Germany is an unnatural habitat for polar bears. For those who say that it would have died on its own has nature intended, what about all of the children that are abandon and rejected by their parents? According to your logic, we too should let them die, yes? Why is it okay to show compassion to only humans and not animals? How does killing this animal for "its own good" or the "good of nature" make ANY sense?

Some want to kill a perfectly health baby animal for shear principle...you're incredible hypocrites. I hope you are held to such an idealist principle that has no basis in compassion and reason. You are contemptible!

[ksmccarthy1]

I was born in Germany after WW2 in 1947 while my fateher was in the US Army and my mother was working as atranslator at the Nuremberg Trials. I thought the people would "move on", but apparently there are lots of them that are still in the "Zyklon B" mode when it comes to sick, abandoned, etc. animals and people.

[dragonmouse-2009]

Why on earth would you leave a baby polar bear to die???

[ssporleder]

This bear has fame which should be good for this zoo system in Germany, why can't they treat him as a little icon, rather than act like a modern day HITLER regime, since that is what they would have done - gassing the animal.
The zoo should get the bear out of there to another zoo under the cloak of darkness and with a change in identity, a bear witness protection sort of thing, because he is not safe in in Germany, and there is no logical reason to terminate him.
Can't he be reconditioned, weaned off of human contact at this young age?