OK, so save the baby seals, but kill the baby bears--is that right?: Photo from Backgrounds Archive
Courtesy Backgrounds Archive
There's a line attributed to George Orwell: "Some ideas are so wrong, only an intellectual could believe them." This story is exhibit A.
Last December, a polar bear in the Berlin Zoo gave birth to two cubs. The mother abandoned her offspring, as wild animals sometimes do. The first cub died. The zookeepers intervened and have raised the second cub by hand.
Now, "animal rights" activists are demanding that the zoo kill the little cub. Seriously. They actually claim it is cruel to keep the cub alive, saying it will suffer humiliation if it is kept as a pet.
Listen to the words of these "animal lovers:"
"The zoo must kill the bear," said spokesman Frank Albrecht. "Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws." … They argue that current treatment of the cub is inhumane and could cause him future difficulties interacting with fellow polar bears. "They cannot domesticate a wild animal," added Ruediger Schmiedel, head of the Foundation for Bears.
Y'know, when I was 10 years old, I would do the stupid things that 10-year-old boys do. And my mother in her frustration would sometimes ask, "Do you sit on your brains?" I would ask the same thing of these people, except that would imply they actually have brains to sit upon. Keeping an animal alive is inhumane? Wild animals experience human emotions? Wild animals cannot be domesticated? It boggles the mind that a person can actually be this stupid and still live.
(Though perhaps not for long. Recently, another "animal lover" broke into the cheetah cage at the Belgian Zoo to be with the cats that she loved. The cheetahs had her for lunch. A zoo spokesman, who really should know better, said "the cheetahs betrayed her trust." It's difficult to say who's the bigger fool: the lady who got into the cage with the wild animals, or the spokesperson who thinks wild animals recognize "trust." Yikes.)
Last night on the news, I saw another story about a zoo that has found a unique way to raise two tiger cubs. They were abandoned by their mother at birth. But the cubs have been put in a pen with a mother sow and her piglets and the cubs feel that they're part of the family. That is, I guess, until they get a craving to eat some bacon!
All Knut, all the time: Der Spiegel magazine has a Knut news aggregator.
Two tiny polar bear cubs at the Nurenburg Zoo (in Germany) were apparently eaten by their mother when zookeepers decided not to intervene. A third cub, at the same zoo, was "rescued" when its mother started to show signs of rejecting it. The incidents revived "debate in Germany about the ethics of allowing nature to take its course in the decidedly unnatural environment of a public zoo."
For more, here's a link to an article ("Germany's polar bear cub quandary") in Time.
that is so sad about the baby polar bear they should not kill it that is one of the meanest things ive ever heard
that is so mean about the baby polar bear i hope it is not killed
Baby Knut is all growed up, and apparently decidedly less cute.
this is such a cute polor bear!!!!!!they should not kill them!!!!!
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