Aah!

Now I'm not a great animal lover. Don't get me wrong I don't spend every waking hour devising new ways of inflicting pain on those creatures who have the misfortune to share this third rock from the sun with us, it's just that I just don't interact with cats and dogs or other 'cuddlies'. Give me a whale, a shark or something whose immense power I can admire and you have me hooked, give me a litter of 'nice' kittens and I'll give you a hessian sack full of bricks*.

But this little guy above does look, oh I don't know, cute. He's a three month old polar bear cub called Knut and he's at the centre of row between a group of animal activists who want him put down (see Germans can do irony) and the zoo where he currently lives.

Knut lives at a zoo in Berlin and since birth, when he was ignored by his mother, he has been bottle fed and comforted by zoo staff. Now the animal rights activists are accusing the zoo of domesticating the bear and say he should be put down, the zoo say rubbish. The chief vet at Berlin Zoo said: "Polar bears live alone in the wild. I see no logical reason why this bear should be killed. Polar bears are under threat of extinction, and if we feed the bear with a bottle it has a good chance of growing up and perhaps becoming attractive as a stud for other zoos."

Now there are good reasons for not liking zoos, but isn't the opportunity to continue the life of an endangered animal and help curtail the extinction of the breed better than killing one?

*For anybody from the RSPCA who has dropped by this is 'humour'