(DE): Knut helping?

[Guest guest]

Link: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/28072.html

 

Knut helping?

 

Anne Applebaum Posted online: Thursday, April 12, 2007 at 0000 hrs

 

Purchasing a Knut T-shirt has already become a form of anti-global-

warming activism. But is Knut `happy' in captivity?

He is small, white, fluffy and cuddly. Though only 4 months old,

his face has already graced thousands of T-shirts and a good number

of coffee mugs. This month he shares a glossy magazine cover with

Leonardo DiCaprio. Haribo, the company that brought us Gummi Bears,

plans to produce a raspberry-flavoured candy in his honour. In case

you have somehow escaped him on the evening news (and in Europe this

is impossible), you can watch him on the Web playing, chewing on a

towel or taking his first steps.

 

I am talking about Knut, of course, the baby polar bear born in

December at the Berlin Zoo. Rejected by his mother, he has been

raised by a zookeeper over the objections of some animal rights

groups that wanted him put to sleep rather than be

raised " unnaturally. " Now strong, healthy and cuter than ever, he

receives 15,000 to 20,000 visits a day and has single-handedly

transformed the fortunes of the zoo. Before Knut, no one knew the

Berlin Zoo was a listed company. Now, the price of Berlin Zoo shares

tripled.

 

Although Germans say they can't think of a comparable animal

celebrity, Washingtonians can. Having stood in the hour-long line

just to see the National Zoo's comparably cute baby panda, Tai Shan,

gnaw on some frozen fruit juice, I understand that human obsession

with baby animals knows no borders.

 

Still, some further explanation is required. Why panda bears and

polar bears? The National Zoo has bred baby cheetahs and the Berlin

Zoo has bred more than one rhinoceros, but famous photographers and

the international press corps were not rushing to take their

pictures. Surely a dose of anthropomorphism is partly responsible:

Baby bears simply look human in a way that baby rhinos do not. So,

too, is the newspaper-buying public's immediate need to read

something cheerful. One German journalist pointed out that Knut's

first public appearance upstaged UN sanctions on Iran and the latest

Kremlin ban of its political opponents! But Tai Shan and Knut also

arouse deep feelings because they fit neatly into narratives about

pollution, endangered species and, in the case of the baby polar

bear, global warming. After 30 years of unsuccessful attempts to

breed a panda in captivity, Tai Shan's birth appeared to be a

triumph of American veterinary science over the Chinese farmers who

cut down their bamboo trees. Knut's survival — despite maternal

rejection, the scorn of animal rights groups and melting polar ice

caps — is no less uplifting.

 

The truth, of course, is that both baby bears symbolise not success

but failure. The difficulty of breeding pandas in zoos and captive

polar bears' rejection of their young are actually proof that large

mammals are profoundly unsuited to cages. Their captivity is

justified only because they are endangered in the wild, yet it is

unlikely that either bear will live in the wild anyway.

 

While we have not " saved " the endangered polar bears by saving Knut,

his existence allows a lot of people to feel better about themselves

anyway: Purchasing a Knut T-shirt has already become a form of anti-

global-warming activism. And if you believe the British philosopher

Roger Scruton, who has written extensively and critically about the

animal rights movement, this isn't entirely innocent behaviour.

Projecting human feelings onto animals inevitably leads to " playing

at God, " and allows us to imagine " that we confer the greatest

benefit on those whom we patronise. " He points out, for example,

that although the passivity of a pet rabbit encourages " its owner's

utterly fallacious view of himself as the kindly provider, " the

rabbit's life is sheer mental torture.

 

Although I'm not advocating death for either of them, it's hard to

say whether Knut or Tai Shan is really " happy " in captivity,

whatever " happy " means for a bear. It's equally hard to say whether

their miraculous births will ever improve the deteriorating natural

environment of their wild cousins, let alone prevent global warming.

It is not at all hard to guess, however, that most 6-year-olds of

your acquaintance will soon be demanding a stuffed Knut toy for

their 7th birthday. Buy one if you will — but don't imagine you'll

help save the polar bears by doing so.

 

The Washington Post