Zoo lets Polar Bear Cubs Get Eaten by Mother to Avoid “Knut 2” (update)

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Update: Video:
Here’s part of the video that I mentioned below of the polar bear Vera who didn’t kill her cubs. This cub was eventually taken away from her after another polar bear mother in the same zoo is presumed to have eaten her young, as described below. The video that I saw on the news showed the bear being dropped repeatedly and it looked more deliberate than in this footage.


This is huge news in Germany today where I live. Two five week-old polar bear cubs have died after their mother presumably ate her babies. Two polar bears at the Nuremberg zoo, Vera and Wilma, gave birth to an unknown number of cubs just two weeks apart. Wilma had her two cubs three weeks ago and Vera had her cub five weeks ago. Vera’s cub was often heard crying pitifully by zoo visitors but was ignored by the zoo staff, who stubbornly insisted to let nature take its course. The keepers decided to let the newborn bear starve and hope that the mother would eventually care for him instead of hand feeding him like Knut, who became an international sensation at the Berlin zoo after his mother rejected him. Zoo officials specifically cited the Knut case as a reason not to rescue the cubs from either mother.

Vera was seen throwing her cub in a video that’s being shown repeatedly on the news. Now the two three week-old cubs from the other mother Wilma are missing and presumed eaten, as mother polar bears do in the wild when their young are ill. Zookeepers have finally pledged to hand raise Vera’s cub after saying they would wait and see what happened to avoid another Knut situation.

There is a lot of confusion over how many cubs were born, and in a Reuters news report they say that they can’t be sure how many cubs there were. An article in The Guardian reports that six cubs were born. Another Reuters story claims that each polar bear mother gave birth to just one cub, and German source Spiegel says that three cubs were born, two of which are missing and one of which has been removed from the other mother for safety after it was being seeing tossed around. It’s hard to tell what happened exactly, but it sounds like two three-week-old polar bear cubs were killed by their mother, Wilma, and that one remains from the other mother.

A zoo in southern Germany today came under fire for refusing to save the lives of two polar bear cubs who were apparently eaten by their mother, in order to avoid a sequel of “Knut mania”.

Nuremberg zoo, in Bavaria, southern Germany, refused demands to rear the vulnerable cubs by hand as Berlin zoo famously did a year ago.

Knut, Berlin’s polar bear cub, was whisked to safety from its mother’s enclosure in a fishing net in December 2006, subsequently becoming internationally famous.

However, Nuremberg zoo chiefs said nature should take its course in the case of the cubs that polar bear Vilma gave birth to five weeks ago.

“We wanted to avoid a repeat of the stupid Knut mania and not rear the animal by hand,” Helmut Mägdefrau, the deputy director of the zoo, said.

Despite evidence that Vilma was failing to feed her young, keepers decided to leave them to their own devices. On Monday, they approached the polar bear enclosure after being alerted by the disturbed behaviour of another bear, Vera. They discovered that the cubs could not be found.

“We could not find the remains of the little ones, so we cannot determine the cause of death,” Mr Mägdefrau said, adding: “We’re very sad”.

Despite his assurance that they had died, keepers had been unable to enter Vilma’s cave by yesterday evening to see for themselves.

Mr Mägdefrau said it was not clear whether Vilma had killed her young because they were sick – a not untypical reaction of polar bears in the wild – or had let them die for the same reason and then consumed them.

However, politicians and animal rights activists were quick to condemn the zoo, accusing it of neglect.

“You cannot just dump them in an artificial environment and then treat them as if they’re living in the wild,” Berthold Merkel, the president of Bavaria’s Animal Protection Association, said.

The affair reignited the row of a year ago, when an animal rights activist provoked an international outcry by arguing that Knut should have been allowed to die after being rejected by his mother rather than being unnaturally reared by humans.

However, supporters of the efforts to save Knut said it was a zoo’s duty to conserve animals, and that it was nonsense to treat them as if they were in the wild.

Attention is now focused on polar bear Vera, who also recently gave birth. Reacting to the public outcry, the zoo yesterday announced it would be rearing her [one remaining] cub by hand.

[From Guardian.co.uk]

There is footage of Vera looking like she’s tossing her cub in a deliberate effort to kill it. It’s been all over the news today and I haven’t been able to find it yet online. I first saw it while out having lunch and other people at the restaurant were exclaiming loudly how awful it was.

The Berlin Zoo director has openly disagreed with the way that the Nuremberg zoo officials handled the case of the cubs. He said “This is not some new fad. We hand-reared a bear in 1986 that now lives in Serbia. That is responsible breeding and care. We have no concerns for the welfare of Knut.”

It looks like the Nuremberg zoo will have another little Knut after all, and a lot of well-deserved negative publicity for not looking after the other cubs before they met untimely ends. They did mean well in that they hoped the mothers would care for their cubs, but it seems they waited too long.

I’m not able to read German well, but my husband told me that the Bild article says that officials at the Nuremberg zoo wanted to install cameras to monitor the state of however many cubs there were from the two mothers, but that the cameras did not arrive before the births and they didn’t want to disturb the cubs or their mothers at this crucial time. If animals raised in captivity have a tendency to kill their young because they feel that their young are not safe, shouldn’t their young be saved from the mothers before it’s too late?

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Vera and her cub, which will be raised by humans

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