Knut

02/13/2007

Berlin's New Polar Bear

Is Knut Big Enough to Be a Mascot?

Much excitement has surrounded Knut the baby polar bear's arrival in Berlin. Mayor Klaus Wowereit is a fan, and now the city's ice hockey team wants him to be their mascot. He'll be ready for that -- and for public viewing -- when he gains a little more weight.

Knut the polar bear, born helpless and cold in Berlin last December but now weighing an impressive five kilograms, has upstaged even Hollywood stars at this year's Berlinale film festival.

Someone spraypainted an impromptu show of support for Knut on a sign for Berlin's film festival, which has a bear mascot (like the city itself) -- a sign at the festival center at Potsdamer Platz reads, not "Welcome Clint" or "Welcome Sharon Stone," but "Welcome Knut."

Knut is the Berlin Zoo's first newborn polar bear in over 30 years. He was kept in an incubator for 44 days and bottle-fed after his mother, Tosca, rejected him. Tosca is a 20-year-old former East German circus bear who has never cared for pups before.

Knut is still too small for display at the Berlin Zoo -- he needs to weigh eight kilograms before his handlers subject him to public life -- but he is already a sensation in the city. Berlin's popular mayor Klaus Wowereit recently told the newspaper Bild that he checks the news every morning for fresh pictures of him, saying "he's like a little soft toy."

Meanwhile Berlin's hockey team, the Eisbären (Polar Bears), has asked zoo officials if they can adopt him as a mascot.

"We should wait," answered a Knut spokesman, according to the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel, who even have a Web site dedicated to Knut, "until he's a big enough boy."

Bears have been a symbol of Berlin since the Middle Ages, when the Dukes of Brandenburg used them on their coats of arms.

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