Oh my. I’m a sucker for cute bears*. I admit it. My head almost explodes with cuteness overload if I look at this for too long. Have to look away. Read the Reuters story on the controversy (?) about the fate of Knut the bear here.
[Update: There’s a Guardian article here, with excellent photos (thanks Amara), such as this one:
Click for a larger version.]
And yes, of course…. YouTube footage can be found. Here for example is a combined video of CNN and ProSieben footage (the former in English – reported by Diana Magnay… who’s pretty damned cute herself, and the latter in German):
[*Update: I’ve been guilty of cute bear cub posts before. Remember my post Pandamonium?]
-cvj
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this is TOTALLY RETARDED! i cant believe u ppl think this is cute. the bear .is ugly and anyway i thought polar bears are extinct..they shud be
Those evil crazy environmentalists! They want to destroy the world! How could they ever think of killing the adorable white furry teddy bear whose name is Kunt?
he is sooooooooooo cute. is he endangered? what kinda of bear is he?=)
For a variety of hideous and tragic reasons, this old crazed hippy suggests recalling a certain governor of CA saying (paraphrasing the much longer quote): If you have seen one redwood tree you have seen them all, and we are already saving some, so we can clearcut the rest! If Knut is really this special and cute, would it not be in the best interest of our children’s children’s children to ponder protecting the few remaining ones who are drowning in their own natural habitat???? But hey, one cute one seems to be sufficient.
When Knut was a baby it was very sweet but now it became a huge bear that can’t be mentioned as sweet anymore 🙂
Oh! That is so cute.I love it.But I think it is in a bit problem for not to be on the ice.
emmm if I could get a cute polar brer like this!
he is very cute how can someone want to put him down????
GET MORE PICTURES
he is so cute! as in super cute!
so cute!
4 letters C-U-T-E!!!!!!!!! he is so cute i cant believe how heartless you would have to be to want this bundle of joy put to sleep!!!!
Save knut!!! He is a small bundle of joy how could they think of puting him to sleep that is a crime imagine a world with out knut with out a endangered cute polar bear. I mean he is awsome I mean poler bear kind has given up on him and people want to kill him.Happy birthday Knut!!!! WE LOVE YOU!!
I can’t believe an animal rights activist said to put down a baby polar bear for no reasons relating to the health of the cute little thing.
Knut isn’t going to have severe psychological damage either, it only would if he was raised in the wild and then forced to live in captivity. He doesn’t know anything other than the people who raise him and the life he has, how would this confuse him? He looks pretty happy to me.
Knut is soo ah-dorable!!! My aunt and uncle used to live in Alaska and took care of injured polar bear cubs and penguins. I just hope that crazed lunatic doesn’t come along and kill the poor bear!
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True it’s rather sad that the Panda population in Germany decreased by 50% the same day as polar bear Knut made his public debut. The Berlin zoo had two Pandas, one male which was a present by a former head of PR China (forgot name and job title) to former German chancelor Helmut Schmidt and one female which was a long term loan from China. Unfortunately (and despite many effords on the human side possibly including Viagra and bear porn) the two could not be convinced to mate. I took a few out of focus pictures of them only three weeks ago:
http://mathphys.iu-bremen.de/~robert/pandas/
It’s the female that died now and again bildblog has some background information on the Bild coverage:
http://www.bildblog.de/?p=2172
(in German) the punchline being that besides a small tumor in the liver the panda had an intestinal obstruction both which Bild reports but stilll Bild speculates that it’s Knut’s popularity that broke the Panda’s heart.
Thanks Robert for explaining that…
I am embarrassed to say that I was taken in by the story “German environmentalists want Knut dead.” I gave it no thought whatsoever, just chalking it up to the sort of humorless thing that German environmentalists would say, wouldn’t they. It is horrifying how uncritical one (I) can be about news stories.
NO! Really? What’s the link?
-cvj
A rather tragic footnote to this tale has been the death, two cages down, of Yan Yan the panda, who had been, prior to the arrival of Knut, the most popular bear in town. A broken heart or a shattered ego could be the COD; Bild has named Knut as the primary cause of whatever it is that took the panda away. And all this reported at length in the London Times.
Aww, look at the cute baby shark. It’s so cute. I want to just go for a swim with the entire family.
Robert- ah, ok, thanks for the clarification of the situation! It did sound rather absurd to me, and I suppose it was because of the absurdity of a misquote in the first place.
This post really cheered me up after an exhausting and rather frustrating day! The pictures are delightful. Bears are simply wonderful (I’ve always thought this), and bear cubs are just too lovely for words.
Robert: I cannot believe the volume of videos of Knut. THANKS 🙂 And I can’t believe that I’m completely melting over the little guy myself. Now I know what he sounds like! He has all of the makings of a world sensation…
P.S. I remember Bild…Usually I avoid tabloids, in whichever country I find myself. I hope that there was a reasonably hard response in the general population to their action, this time.
If it would have been suggested by a crazy hippie… In fact, he never suggested it he was just misquoted by the tabloid paper “Bild” which has a history of causing public uproar by intentionally misquoting people. This animal rights activist was just complaining that a newborn bear at another zoo had been put to sleep with the reasoning that it would not be natural for him if he were brought up by humans and he would suffer severe bear-psychological damage. The crazy hippie was arguing that if that reasoning would have been valid for the other zoo it should also apply to Knut knowing of cause that cute Knut is absolutely save being a celebrity.
It was just Bild’s strive for big headlines when Monday last week they had the coverpage asking “Knut to be killed?”. In their world, whenever they ask a question, of course the answer is “no” given that if there is any doubt they usually just claim the most outrageous thing.
Unfortunately, besides making big money using these techniques (and a history of intentionally writing articles which are just advertisments for their business partners) they also have significant (bad) influence on the public opinion and thus policy makers here in Germany.
There is a blog by professionel journalists discussing these practices:
http://www.bildblog.de/?p=2147
Waaaay too cute. I want a baby polar bear!!!
(Btw, was I the only one who thought the “kill the bear” thing was completely silly because we all knew no one was listening to the crazed hippie who proposed it?)
Oh boy, I thought this is just Germany going crazy about Knut. I have to admit on Sunday I watched a one hour TV feature about him. Want more videos? Here
http://www.rbb-online.de/_/knut/index_jsp/key=5484775.html
is his page on Berlin local public tv and he even has a blog himself:
http://blog.rbb-online.de/roller/knut/
(all in German).
I had the same reaction when I first saw pictures of him too. This one:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gallery/2007/mar/23/internationalnews?picture=329755933
really gets me. This picture is linked this Guardian article, where you can download more pictures.
Awwwww! He looks like a toy! So cute! 🙂