Post by bluehawaii61 on Nov 15, 2008 18:29:31 GMT -5
Here are bits and pieces of a story Knut the Polar Bear.
Knut is the big star of the Zoo Berlin. The little polar bear was born on Dec. 5, 2006 and the first polar bear to be born in Zoo Berlin in over 30 years.
Knut has been nurtured by a keeper who has slept by his side, bottle-fed him, and strummed him Elvis Presley songs.
But suggestions the three-month-old should have been put down to stop him becoming emotionally and physically reliant on a human have caused outrage.
"We are keeping Knut," Berlin zoo's vet told the BBC. "He's staying alive."
But ahead of his debut, several voices have questioned the decision to keep him alive after he was rejected by his mother, a 20-year-old former performing bear from East Germany.
Both Knut and his twin were left exposed to freezing temperatures shortly after they were born in December. Knut's brother died, at which point the zoo intervened to save the surviving cub.
"One should have had the courage to let the bear die then," said Wolfram Graf-Rudolf, head of the Aachen Zoo, cited by the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
"Knut was a healthy baby bear when we found him and so there was no reason for us to put him down," he said. "And there's certainly no reason to do so now."
To help Knut gain independence, he was already being left on his own for a couple of hours each day, and had been weaned off the bottle.
Polar bears were lonesome creatures, and so spending several years without the company of other bears would not be a problem, said Mr Schuele.
The cub will however eventually be introduced to others - although not back to his own family in Berlin Zoo.
ANOTHER PIECE.........
An adorable polar bear cub who has won the hearts of Berliners has just about escaped the death sentence that animal rights activists had imposed on him
Knut is the first baby polar bear to survive in the Berlin zoo in 30 years. His mother, Tosca, a grumpy 20-year-old former circus bear, abandoned him and his brother to die on a rock in the bear pit after they were born on Dec. 5, 2006.
Keepers scooped the cubs out of the compound with fishing net and placed both bear babies in an incubator.
Only Knut survived, and he was brought up as a pampered baby, fed with human milk and cod-liver oil every half hour. Now that he's almost 4 months old, he is fed chicken puree, sleeps with a teddy bear, plays with a football and his keeper strums Elvis Presley songs to improve his mood.
The comforting power of Elvis has once again become obvious, this time for a baby polar at the Berlin.
Zookeepers are doing their best to keep a baby polar bear alive, after it was abandoned by its mother.
A healthy daily meal keeps the baby animal up and running, but after each meal, the baby polar bear is treated to 'feel good Elvis music'.
However, not all is well in Berlin. Animal right activists have filed a request to put the baby polar bear to sleep. Their main argument is the 'human' and therefore unnatural way the baby bear is raised. Away from his kin, the little animal has no chance to live a normal Bear live.
Needless to say that the general public thinks different, after seeing the cute first pictures.
YET ANOTHER PIECE........
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Love story: Knut mourns his keeper
The documentaries that showed him strumming Elvis's "(You're The) Devil in Disguise" on a guitar as he lulled the world's most famous polar bear to sleep were enough to win the hearts of millions of Germans.
This week, Thomas Dörflein, the Berlin zoo keeper who raised Knut from cub to full maturity, was found dead in mysterious circumstances in a friend's Berlin apartment. (Reports suggested the cause was cancer or a heart attack, but ruled out suicide.) It emerged that it wasn't only the bear who had been receiving bucketloads of fan mail. With his endearing manner, thick black beard and shoulder-length hair swept back in a ponytail, Dörflein, who was just 44, was an unlikely heart-throb who had been deluged with letters from admiring women. According to reports yesterday, in the past few weeks the keeper had been fending off groupies every time he left the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Daniela.
So what was it about this man that captured the German imagination? His appeal, of course, had everything to do with the other half of his double-act, the bear Knut. Their relationship became symbiotic not long after photographs and television footage of the tiny, snowy-white and initially blind bear were released, following the animal's birth at Berlin Zoo in December 2006. He had been rejected by his mother, a disturbed East German circus bear called Tosca, and under natural conditions Knut would have died shortly after birth.
Dörflein came to the rescue. For nearly 18 months, the keeper acted as a surrogate mother, hand-feeding his charge day and night with baby bottles full of milk, rubbing his body with baby oil, and playing him sentimental Elvis hits songs. He even christened the bear with an Old Norse name: "He just looks like a Knut," was how Dörflein justified his choice.
So amid the controversy of whether or not to be put down. This Little Bear grew up on Elvis Music. He survived and although his home may change, he is approaching his second birthday.
Go KNUT!!!
Knut is the big star of the Zoo Berlin. The little polar bear was born on Dec. 5, 2006 and the first polar bear to be born in Zoo Berlin in over 30 years.
Knut has been nurtured by a keeper who has slept by his side, bottle-fed him, and strummed him Elvis Presley songs.
But suggestions the three-month-old should have been put down to stop him becoming emotionally and physically reliant on a human have caused outrage.
"We are keeping Knut," Berlin zoo's vet told the BBC. "He's staying alive."
But ahead of his debut, several voices have questioned the decision to keep him alive after he was rejected by his mother, a 20-year-old former performing bear from East Germany.
Both Knut and his twin were left exposed to freezing temperatures shortly after they were born in December. Knut's brother died, at which point the zoo intervened to save the surviving cub.
"One should have had the courage to let the bear die then," said Wolfram Graf-Rudolf, head of the Aachen Zoo, cited by the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
"Knut was a healthy baby bear when we found him and so there was no reason for us to put him down," he said. "And there's certainly no reason to do so now."
To help Knut gain independence, he was already being left on his own for a couple of hours each day, and had been weaned off the bottle.
Polar bears were lonesome creatures, and so spending several years without the company of other bears would not be a problem, said Mr Schuele.
The cub will however eventually be introduced to others - although not back to his own family in Berlin Zoo.
ANOTHER PIECE.........
An adorable polar bear cub who has won the hearts of Berliners has just about escaped the death sentence that animal rights activists had imposed on him
Knut is the first baby polar bear to survive in the Berlin zoo in 30 years. His mother, Tosca, a grumpy 20-year-old former circus bear, abandoned him and his brother to die on a rock in the bear pit after they were born on Dec. 5, 2006.
Keepers scooped the cubs out of the compound with fishing net and placed both bear babies in an incubator.
Only Knut survived, and he was brought up as a pampered baby, fed with human milk and cod-liver oil every half hour. Now that he's almost 4 months old, he is fed chicken puree, sleeps with a teddy bear, plays with a football and his keeper strums Elvis Presley songs to improve his mood.
The comforting power of Elvis has once again become obvious, this time for a baby polar at the Berlin.
Zookeepers are doing their best to keep a baby polar bear alive, after it was abandoned by its mother.
A healthy daily meal keeps the baby animal up and running, but after each meal, the baby polar bear is treated to 'feel good Elvis music'.
However, not all is well in Berlin. Animal right activists have filed a request to put the baby polar bear to sleep. Their main argument is the 'human' and therefore unnatural way the baby bear is raised. Away from his kin, the little animal has no chance to live a normal Bear live.
Needless to say that the general public thinks different, after seeing the cute first pictures.
YET ANOTHER PIECE........
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Love story: Knut mourns his keeper
The documentaries that showed him strumming Elvis's "(You're The) Devil in Disguise" on a guitar as he lulled the world's most famous polar bear to sleep were enough to win the hearts of millions of Germans.
This week, Thomas Dörflein, the Berlin zoo keeper who raised Knut from cub to full maturity, was found dead in mysterious circumstances in a friend's Berlin apartment. (Reports suggested the cause was cancer or a heart attack, but ruled out suicide.) It emerged that it wasn't only the bear who had been receiving bucketloads of fan mail. With his endearing manner, thick black beard and shoulder-length hair swept back in a ponytail, Dörflein, who was just 44, was an unlikely heart-throb who had been deluged with letters from admiring women. According to reports yesterday, in the past few weeks the keeper had been fending off groupies every time he left the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Daniela.
So what was it about this man that captured the German imagination? His appeal, of course, had everything to do with the other half of his double-act, the bear Knut. Their relationship became symbiotic not long after photographs and television footage of the tiny, snowy-white and initially blind bear were released, following the animal's birth at Berlin Zoo in December 2006. He had been rejected by his mother, a disturbed East German circus bear called Tosca, and under natural conditions Knut would have died shortly after birth.
Dörflein came to the rescue. For nearly 18 months, the keeper acted as a surrogate mother, hand-feeding his charge day and night with baby bottles full of milk, rubbing his body with baby oil, and playing him sentimental Elvis hits songs. He even christened the bear with an Old Norse name: "He just looks like a Knut," was how Dörflein justified his choice.
So amid the controversy of whether or not to be put down. This Little Bear grew up on Elvis Music. He survived and although his home may change, he is approaching his second birthday.
Go KNUT!!!