How to use this Page

Readers might remember last July when the Webmeister and I were in Berlin, we visited the Zoo and it's most famous resident, the adorable polar bear cub, Knut:



So cute, that Knut!

Well, the other day the Webmeister forwarded me some rather disturbing news about my furry now not-so-little friend. It appears Knut has gone all Britney on us.

Knut the polar bear has turned from a cuddly cub into a publicity-addicted psycho, one of his keepers has claimed.

Markus Roebke said Berlin Zoo's celebrity animal was obsessed with the limelight and howled with rage when denied an audience.

"Knut must go and the sooner the better," he said, insisting that the bear should be sent to an animal park where he received less attention

"He is addicted to the whole show, the human adulation. It is not healthy.

"He actually cries out or whimpers if he sees that there is not a spectator outside his enclosure ready to ooh and aah at him.

"When the zoo had to shut because of black ice everywhere he howled until staff members stood before him and calmed him down."

Mr Roebke added: "The trouble is that he identifies himself as a human and not as a polar bear...Knut needs publicity and that must change."

Mr Roebke is not the only observer to question Knut's sanity. In January, a prominent animal conservationist branded him "an animal psychopath".

Last week we posted a series of articles by Philip Davis, author of Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life. Today is the final piece in the installation. To see the previous posts click here. This post originally appeared on Moreover.

In the beginning dogs, it is written, were the first creatures domesticated by human beings. And when the humans saw the difference between themselves and the dogs, they knew more about what being human meant. (This is the true Gospel of Otherness.) Then the humans, being more than their dogs, began to domesticate other animals, to lie amongst them. And so in time what became pastoral agriculture was born. (more…)

Share This