Animal Rights group demands that Knut the Polar Bear be castrated (he's dating his 1st cousin)

[LynneSin]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,681366,00.html

Knut Should be Castrated, Animal Rights Group Says
By David Crossland

As if Berlin Zoo's polar bear star Knut hasn't had enough upheaval in his life, animal rights group PETA demanded on Tuesday that he should be castrated to avoid him inbreeding with his girlfriend Giovanna. The two apparently share the same grandfather. The demand is likely to outrage his many fans.

Knut the celebrity polar bear has been through a lot in his young life. First he was abandoned by his mother. Then animal rights campaigners reportedly called for him to be put down rather than face an unnatural childhood being hand-reared.

By the time he was three months old, he faced the stresses of global superstardom as hundreds of thousands of fans queued up to see him play with his keeper, Thomas Dörflein, and camera crews from around the world covered his every move.

<<<<snip>>>>

Things finally started looking up again last year for Knut, when he was introduced to a female companion, Giovanna, a tempestuous polar bear brought over from the Munich Zoo while her enclosure there was being renovated.

Knut seemed to have found an equilibrium, a bit of peace, away from the media spotlight, and in the company of a furry friend of his own species.

And now this. The animal rights group PETA has demanded that he be castrated. The zoo expert of PETA's German operation, Frank Albrecht, said on Tuesday that Giovanna and Knut had the same grandfather and that they would be inbreeding if they produced offspring.

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2008/03/02/knut_wideweb__470x346,2.jpg
that's Knut before and today


Knut with his new girlfriend

[TZ]

1. I guess PETA wants to castrate EVERY wild cheetah then.

Thats a highly inbred population of animals. It would be nice if PETA actually employed zoologists/biologists but that would be much too rational for them...Idiots.

[joeybee12]

12. And they probably shouldn't be...inbreeding is largely due to loss

of habitat, and can cause many problems in the offspring...inbreeding isn't good for any species on this planet.

[TZ]

14. No actually Cheetahs have a naturally small genetic pool

Scientists aren't quite sure why. Thats why even zoo breeding is difficult.

[Deep13]

2. You've got to be fucking kidding me.

The animal RIGHTS group wants to mutilate an animal of an endangered species because this offends HUMAN notions of social decorum.

[AngryAmish]

5. They wanted him dead before

[joeybee12]

13. That wasn't PETA...n/t

[TZ]

15. Yes it was. See the article.

They wanted him euthanized instead of being hand raised.

[hobbit709]

3. Maybe PETA should apply this to themselves first.

[TreasonousBastard]

17. Yes. PETAns breeding scares me more than bears of any sort.

[Blue_Tires]

4. i guess i'll be the first...

<==== makes tasteless, obligatory cliche reference to West Virginia

[raccoon]

6. If it was good enough for Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin, it's good enough for the bears. nt

[rug]

7. What do they expect? Giovanna is tempestuous.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LynneSin]

9. Ironically animals do that regardless if their naughty bits are intact

My cats do it all the time and they were fixed years ago.

[sarge43]

10. Pssst PETA, unless a DNA scan is run, no way of knowing

the biological relationship of any mated pair or breeding group, including ourselves. Many of us have unknown first cousins.

Unless adverse genetic conditions exists in both Knut and Vanna, unlikely their cubs will be affected.

[Mojambo]

11. I know they have some fans here, but goddamn PETA is a fucking joke. n/t

[rcrush]

16. WOW. I'm going to go watch that South Park PETA episode again.

LOL

[old mark]

18. Gonna cut his Knuts off......nt

[yawnmaster]

19. Are you kidding me???

Do they think that a polar bear, in the wild, would not bone...errrr...copulate with a female in heat.
Even if it is cousin.
Or even its mother!

I believe this type of inbreeding is common in nature.