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How cute is <<Knut-of-Berlin>> – vote and see how far you think Knut fares on the <Knut-Cute Meter>!

<<Knut-of-Berlin>> the polar bear cub at the Berlin Zoo has quickly become a superstar not only in Germany but worldwide. Rejected at birth by its mother [ the un-maternal appropriately named <Tosca>], and has since December 2006 been nurtured to health by a devoted Berlin zoo-minder, Thomas Dörflein.

Since his recent first public outside appearence in March, he has won the hearts and minds of Berliners and internationally is probably the city's cutest, furriest and possibly most famous Berliner of 2007.
Animal activists are having a problem with all of this and feel that people raising a polar bear is not appropriate and could even been seen as an abuse of animal rights. Bild newspaper quoted animal rights campaigner Frank Albrecht as saying. "In fact, the cub should have been killed."
Berlin Zoo correctly does not share any of this patent absurdity and Knut-of-Berlin has quickly become the furriest and cudliest inmate of the Berlin Zoo.

Please see Knut in action when you visit the Berlin zoo site at:
http://www.zoo-berlin.de/en/experience/young-animals.html

What is it Berlin has with bears?

First of all, the name! Berlin is connected to the German word for Bear [ Bär ] and was thus named because of the frequency with which bears at this time in the 13th century were encountered in the area now known as Berlin. The city of Berlin [like Bern in Switzerland] has as its emblem and official seal a bear.

A very humorous Berlin Zoo story [plus photo] about an escape bid by <Juan the Andean> bear which can be found at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3612706.stm