Knut, the polar bear who captured the heart of all Berlin zoo goers and attracted tourists from around the world, has died. He was only 4 years old.
His Life Was Brief, but Beautiful
“He was by himself in his compound, he was in the water, and then he was dead,” said bear keeper Heiner Kloes. “He was not sick, we don’t know why he died.” About 600 to 700 people were there, watching, as Knut went from being a swimmer to being a floater.
Now, a polar bear in the wild might live for 20 years, but you can’t blame the zoo. Life expectancies for polar bears in captivity average about 30 years. That might be partly due to a guaranteed healthy diet, and also due to the decreased likelihood of drowning due to shifting ice or being killed by other polar bears or hunters – it is generally considered poor form to poach the zoo animals.
No, this was a moment we probably should have known was coming. It was a tragedy in the classical sense, i.e. inevitable. When Knut was born, his mother rejected him. That’s why zookeepers had to raise him, feeding him from a bottle and having lots of other cute photo ops like that. TV reporters loved the story, and so did their audiences. The world fell in love with Knut. Baby polar bears are a lot like little lambs. Little balls of white fur. Adorable. The difference, of course, is that lambs grow up to be sheep and the polar bears grow up to be fierce killers, the top of their food chain, the lions of the arctic.
But why did the mother reject him? Maybe she sensed that somehow he wasn’t quite right, he was destined not to make it. Later on, he was bullied by other bears and made into sort of an outcast. They, too, probably realized the fatal flaw.
So, it’s very sad that Knut is dead but this is not the moment to assign blame or go on a rant against zoos. Perhaps I’ll get into that some other day.
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