Flocke — the new Knut. What people seem to forget is that in a year’s time, the playful little polar bear cubs tend to grow up into rather nasty brutes with a penchant for killing things.
Not so cute anymore
March 3, 2008
Knut, the cute little polar bear cub, is all growed up — and isn’t it sweet? He’s already tried to eat one of the zoo’s visitors.
I always cringe when I see people fawning over pictures of, for example, bear cubs, because those same animals that are admittedly rather cute when small do not stay small for long, nor do they tend to retain their charming personalities. In the end, even the cutest little polar bear cub will, in time, grow into a rather mean brute of an animal whose only interest in people is as a source of food.
Too often, I think we tend to view animals through the lens of Disney movies, falsely acknowleding a sense of nobility and “humanity” in them. I wonder — honestly — how many people have died from thinking that Bambi was not nearly as fictional as it was?
