Knut the Bear Is Growing Up

Poor Knut, the young polar bear at the Berlin Zoo. He's not so tiny and cute anymore. And he's not getting the attention from zoo visitors that he's learned to enjoy.

Here's an update on his development. The old worries about the effects of being raised by humans have resurfaced.

But times change, cubs grow up and those experts may have been on to something after all. “With Knut, it’s clear that he has imprinted on humans, and when neither his keeper nor visitors are there he cries out,” said Thomas Pietsch, a biologist and expert on wild animals for the animal-welfare group Four Paws in Germany. Peter H. Arras, a zoologist and animal-protection advocate put it more succinctly: “He’s a psychopath addicted to human attention.”

That attention has fallen off significantly. Knut is now too large and too strong to play with Mr. Dörflein. And the largest crowds of spectators have moved south. In the Bavarian city of Nuremberg, a new young cub named Flocke, or Snowflake, claimed the crown of cuteness when she was introduced to the public earlier this month. A third cub in Stuttgart, named Wilbär, is being brought up the old-fashioned way, by his mother.

There are legitimate concerns (except for the newspaper that worried he may be gay. Oh, and the charge that he "senselessly murdered live carp - he is a BEAR, ya know.) But I still don't agree with those who thought he was better off dead.

Photo by davidoo750.