Knut – The Orphaned Polar Bear Cub

Fox News – A new addition to the Berlin Zoo [AP photo] is an abandoned polar bear cub called “Knut”. He has become a front-page sensation, but animal-rights activist believe he would be better off dead than raised by humans.

 

“Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal-protection laws,” animal-rights activist Frank Albrecht was quoted as saying by the mass-circulation Bild Daily, which has featured regular photo spreads tracking fuzzy Knut’s frolicking. “The zoo must kill the bear.” When Knut – or “Cute Knut,” as the 19-pound bear has become known – was born last December, his mother ignored him and his brother, who later died. Zoo officials intervened, choosing to raise the cub themselves. Albrecht’s assertion prompted quick condemnations from the zoo, politicians and other animal-rights groups.

”The killing of an animal has nothing to do with animal protection,” said Wolfgang Apel, head of the German Federation for the Protection of Animals.
Greens politician Undine Kurth called the suggestion “fully unacceptable.” Petra Pau of the opposition Left Party invoked the widely-reported case of an Italian bear dubbed “Bruno” who wandered last year into southern Germany, only to be killed by hunters at the behest of local authorities worried about residents and livestock.
”Berlin is not Bavaria – therefore it will be better for Knut than Bruno,” Pau said.
Albrecht told the Associated Press his beliefs were more nuanced than reported by Bild, though he applauded the debate the article had started. He explained that though he though it was wrong of the zoo to have saved the cub’s life, now that the bear can live on his own, it would be equally wrong to kill him.
”If a polar bear mother rejected the baby, then I believe the zoo must follow the instincts of nature,” Albrecht said. “In the wild, it would have been left to die.”
The German animal rights organization “Four Paws” argued along similar lines, saying it would not be right to punish the cub for a bad decision made by the zoo. Other activists have also argued that current treatment of the cub is inhumane and could lead to future difficulties interacting with fellow polar bears. “They cannot domesticate a wild animal,” Ruediger Schmiedel, head of the Foundation for Bears, told Der Spiegel weekly in its Monday edition. Albrecht cited a similar case of a baby sloth bear that was abandoned by its mother last December in the Leipzig city zoo and killed by lethal injection, rather than being kept alive by humans. But Knut belongs to the Berlin Zoo, and their veterinarian Andre Schuele, charged with caring for him, disagrees.
”These criticisms make me angry, but you can’t take them seriously,” Andre Schuele said. “Polar bears live alone in the wild; I see no logical reason why this bear should be killed.” Schuele also argued that given the increased rarity of polar bears in the wild, it makes sense to keep them alive in captivity so that they can be bred.
”Polar bears are under threat of extinction, and if we feed the bear with a bottle, it has a good chance of growing up and perhaps becoming attractive as a stud for other zoos,” Schuele said. Knut, who recently posed for a photo shoot with star-photographer Annie Leibovitz for an environmental-protection campaign, is scheduled to make his public debut at the zoo later this week or early next week, according to Schuele. Until then, Germans can follow the bear’s progress in a vast photo spread and videos of Knut drinking from his bottle, bathing and playing with teddy bears and soccer balls, all available on the zoo’s web site.

I never understood how an “animal activist” could consider killing a cub in this situation. It was born in the zoo, not the wild. The famous outdoorsman and adventurer, James “Grizzly” Adams fostered an orphaned grizzly cub, what became the subject for books and film. Although not generally recommended – it was an unusual circumstance and the human and bear had a life-long relationship. Humans can interact effectively with animals, and at the same time respect their wild nature by just observing them without interrupting the natural way of nature. And as far as wild animals being tamed – the present animals that are generally accepted as pets going far back in human history were originally wild (except the breeds that have been bred from domesticated species) – so what is the problem? Activist point about “interacting” with other polar bears is moot – the bear was born and lives in a zoo. Does the bear look mistreated and unhappy?

This article shows that the love for animals is a world-wide phenmenon. Humans have interacted with animals in many ways that pre-dates written history. Animals have been a part of human history, in various ways. They were hunted for their meat and the warmth of their pelts. Most people used almost every part of the animal. American Natives (misnamed “Indians” by early explorers because Columbus thought he had found a part of India when discovering the islands and shores of the American and Caribbean area) respected their natural surroundings and its inhabitants – to the point of reverence. They realized they needed the wolf pelt, the buffalo, and other creatures to survive. They became clothing, blankets, sewing needles made from bones, clothing items made from bone, et cetera. And when they had killed an animal for those basic needs, they gave thanks to it for what it supplied. As humans became more agricultural and dependent upon domesticated animals for meat, with occasional substitutes in the form of deer meat, for example, they began to have different relationships with the animal world that surrounded them. Certain animals became a nuisance and endangerment to their livestock, so like the wolf, it was hunted (the pelts being important even today) almost to extinction. The spread of “civilization” – human presence, has been an issue for some time when it concerns the natural world of animals. As in Kritter Girl’s article about the Dodo bird – an animal who had a limited area of existence and fresh-meat foragers in the form of sailors (a common practice in the old sailing days of going ashore on islands and obtaining fresh water and anything edible in the wild they could eat – wild fruits, vegetables and game) – and thus became extinct because of human ignorance of the impact upon that particular animal species.

This is not an advocacy against controlled hunting for the modern hunter, because controlled hunting practices is beneficial to the world of wild animals, deer for example. On the east coast of New England America, there is an island where deer lived and was protected from hunters. The herd grew to such numbers that they were starving and contracting diseases that threatened the entire deer population on the island. Local authorities contracted a group of hunters to reduce the number of deer on the island and the meat was donated to feed folks who were having economic difficulties. This is an example of how conservation and certain views of environmentalism can solve one problem and create another. The alligator in Florida is another example.

As you can see through the report of this story and comments made by certain animal-activist organizations, those groups have fallen into being more political (Green Party or “Greens”, for example) – whose claim to be friends of the Earth in several ways is nothing but a backdrop for their socialist ideology. Organizations like PETA have caused more problems than they solved. Recently legislation in the US Congress has hindered the horse meat industry because of activists against such practice – yet they serve a definite purpose. Before that practice, horses were just killed and thrown into a pit. In some areas of the American West, overpopulation of mustangs has been a problem – both for the animals themselves and humans. Mustang adoption programs were initiated by the US government and private organizations where one can adopt those horses at the cost of just transporting them to one’s destination. They also have been herded and sent to meat processing centers to sell overseas to France and to dog and cat food here in America.

In the wild, there are predators who live on the flesh of other animals. They kill to eat. The only time hunting is wrong is when it becomes a sport or fashionable to use the pelt of a given specie – as during the days of the American “Wild West” and the story of the buffalo hunters and the beaver trappers. The Native American could not comprehend why buffalo [American Bison] carcasses lay wasted on the plains because the buffalo hunters had only wanted the pelts. And I can relate to the way they felt. I also do not comprehend why a polar bear cub must be killed, born in a zoo, because if it was in the wild it would die of starvation. Is that humane? Compassionate? As a boy I found a hawk who had lost its wing at the socket. I tried to save it, even though I knew he couldn’t be released in the wild with only one wing. It died because it refused to eat – even raw hamburger. It was sad, but it is an example that sometimes wild animals cannot be domesticated. But that was the natural order of things, and I could have killed it like the animal activist stated about Knut the cub. So the question in this conundrum is – would it been better to have just killed the hawk quickly or try to save it? I chose the latter, and although it didn’t save the hawk’s life, it was the thing to do. Killing Knut would be as much sense as killing a human orphan because the world is too populated with unwanted children.

Editor’s Note: Mr. Albrecht claims he was misquoted by the Bild Daily reporter.