"New Knuts" vanish at "nature's way" German zoo (Roundup)

Jan 7, 2008, 16:02 GMT

Nuremberg, Germany - Two polar-bear cubs vanished Monday, probably gobbled up by their mother, at a German zoo which refuses to prevent 'nature's way,' and declines to hand-raise its bears.

Their demise comes a year after Berlin Zoo scored a publicity coup by removing a cub, Knut, from its mother and bottle-feeding it.

Knut played every day with his keeper, to the delight of crowds, but is now too big and dangerous to play with humans.

At Nuremberg Zoo, which insists on leaving bear-raising to bears, a keeper cautiously checked out the den of Vilma, a female, and saw no more sign of her recent two offspring. But one or two cubs from another female, Vera, were assumed to be still alive.

The zoo had warned in advance that it would not 'rescue' the cubs.

Chief executive Dag Encke said Vilma's cubs may have been sick. It was common for carnivores to cull any of their young that became weak.

'The mother bear today acted very nervously, had plenty to eat and was obviously not hungry,' the zoo said in statement. 'We can only guess as to how the cubs were killed. Till this morning, everything was completely normal.'

One of the cubs of Vera, the other female, was seen Sunday afternoon, when it was healthy and well.

The Bavarian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals attacked the zoo, saying it had breached its duty of care to the cubs.

'You can't move polar bears into artificial surroundings and then act as if they are still living wild,' said the society president, Berthold Merkel. He demanded the zoo end its polar bear breeding programme completely.

The 'rescue' of Knut in December 2006 triggered fierce debate among animal experts, but children in Berlin and television crews from round the world fell unquestioningly in love with the white cub, which treated its keeper as a mother substitute.

Nuremberg Zoo says it lets the animals alone in their den and believes that sending in keepers to check on them is likely to disturb their natural behaviour.

It assumed from noises coming out of the dens that both females had had two cubs about two weeks ago.