Activist to zoo: Wrong to save baby polar bear

Comments fuel debate over whether humans should raise abandoned cub

Berlin Zoo via AP

"Knut," a polar bear cub abandoned by its mother, plays with a soccer ball at the Berlin Zoo.


BERLIN - Berlin Zoo's abandoned polar bear cub Knut looks cute, cuddly and has become a front-page media darling, but an animal rights activist insists it was wrong to intervene and save the cub.

"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."

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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.