This is Knut, the famous polar bear born at the Berlin Zoo, the first "ice bear" born at the zoo in 30 years. His mother, a rescued circus performer, rejected him, and he was hand raised by a zoo keeper. Eventually Knut became a media sensation (you can read about it at Knut's wiki) and earned the Berlin Zoo millions of euros.
I'm not normally a fan of zoos—I don't like seeing animals in captivity, but for Knut I made an exception to my no-zoo policy. Plus, we visited the Berlin Zoo in 1990, when my daughters were small, and I wanted to see it again.
Knut had been separated from the other polar bears, and has a girlfriend now, though both are still adolescents. He's become a symbol of the threat to polar bears from climate change, and cheerfully lends his picture to the cause.
Knut cleans his paw
But when I saw him, he was more concerned with licking his paw than with climate change (the temperature was in the 40s, and while I was freezing, the polar bears seemed to feel right at home).
The other polar bears, including, I suppose, Knut's negligent mother.
I didn't stay long at the zoo—seeing monkeys in cages, with rude people making fun of them, freaks me out. I prefer safari parks, where I'm the one in the cage and the monkeys make fun of us.
