Animal rights activists.. <insert long string of foul language here>
Im sorry to all the animal rights activists on this forum but this one from germany should be fed to a polar bear...
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/kil...153106086.html
For the click adverse.
Kill this cub? You must be knuts!
Berlin Zoo's abandoned Knut has become a front page media darling, but an animal rights activist insists he would have been better off dead than raised by humans.
Photo: AP
Jano Gibson
March 21, 2007 - 8:35AM
A German zoo has been told it should let a baby polar bear known as "cuddly Knut'' die after it was rejected by its mother.
Knut and his twin brother were abandoned shortly after birth in December by 20-year-old Tosca, a former performing polar bear at an East German zoo.
The twin died in freezing conditions but Knut was saved and has since been hand-reared by Berlin Zoo zookeeper Thomas Doerflein, who sleeps by his side, bottle-feeds him and even plays Elvis Presley songs to him on a guitar, according to German news reports.
Reuters says three-month-old Knut has become an unofficial Berlin city mascot and has also starred in a climate change campaign by world-renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz.
But the animal has sparked debate over whether it is right for a human to nurture a polar bear.
Animal rights activist Frank Albrecht told Germany's Bild newspaper: ``Hand-rearing a polar bear is not appropriate and is a serious violation of animal rights.
"In fact, the cub should have been killed,'' he said.
His view was backed up by the head of another zoo who has watched two hand-reared animals struggle to cope after being inevitably separated from their human carers.
"One should have had the courage to let the bear die then [when Knut's twin died],'' Aachen Zoo boss, Wolfram Graf-Rudolf, reportedly told a German newspaper.
"Each time his keeper leaves him, and he can't follow, he will die a little.''
The BBC said it was not unusual for animals to be put down after being abandoned by their mothers.
Last December a baby sloth was put down at Leipzig zoo after it was rejected by its mother, it said.
However Berlin Zoo has rejected calls for Knut's killing and says he is strong enough to shortly go on public display.
"We are keeping Knut,'' Berlin Zoo's vet, Andre Schuele, told the BBC.
"He's staying alive. Knut was a healthy baby bear when we found him and so there was no reason for us to put him down ... And there's certainly no reason to do so now.''
He said Knut was being left alone for a couple of hours each day and was slowly being weaned off the bottle to help him gain his independence.
He will eventually be introduced to other polar bears at a different zoo, the vet said.
Comment: I knew there was a reason I disliked animal rights activists... It started with the ill informed campaign against muelsing of sheep and this has just reinforced it...
