R.I.P., Knutkeeper

Some sad news from the world of interspecies mothering: the Berlin zookeeper who raised baby Knut by hand was found dead in his apartment two days ago. Thomas Doerflein was 44 and had been seriously ill for a long time.

Knut and his human handler gained international fame in December 2006 after this buttery little marshmallow was abandoned by his mother, a former star of the East German circus. Doerflein raised the bear by hand, remaining at Knut's side for 150 days in a row, sleeping at the zoo, playing Elvis songs on the guitar so the bear could sleep. For nearly a year, Knut and his human mother-father captured the world's imagination as we, in our far corners of the earth, pictured ourselves parenting a furry little bear, sleeping at night in his little cage, and feeding it that delicious-sounding admixture of milk porridge and cat food.

"I could throw him against the wall when everything comes together and he's shat all over his cage at three o'clock in the morning," Doerflein once told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper.

Knut became a huge draw for the Berlin zoo as he followed Doerflein around like a puppy during their two hours of "the Knut show" each day at the zoo. The German media became wildly obsessed with the little bear, and the German Environment Minister named Knut "Ambassador for Climate Protection."

But along with adoration and lots and lots of euros, this story of human-bear love eventually attracted the same level of scrutiny as any verboten tabloid romance. Some animal rights activists who objected to the hand-rearing called for Knut to be put to sleep. The Nuremburg Zoo sniffed that they would let their new baby bears die before blurring the lines of human-animal families. (Nuremburg ended up reversing its position and hand-rearing little Flocke after one of the other polar bears ate her own two cubs.)

Then there came a day when the two friends had to part; the family was torn asunder. Knut was growing large and rough, and the Berlin Zoo's director forbade further contact lest Knut take that fatal chomp out of his keeper. Knut was inconsolable at first, and howled from his enclosure whenever he caught Doerflein's scent.

No living animal stays a fun little baby forever, and Knut eventually grew into the regular kind of polar bear. Zoo visitors recently watched in disgust as Knut ate all ten of the carp that were put in his moat to clean it. No longer a civilized pet eating cat food, Knut even lunged at the glass of his enclosure in hopes of eating a toddler who was brought to view him. At just over a year old, Knut was dismissed as a filthy psychopath who could never again find true love.

Thomas Dorflein had worked at the Berlin zoo since 1980. In October 2007, he received the Medal of Merit from the City of Berlin for his dedication to Knut. By most accounts, he was a private person who tried as much as possible to avoid the media frenzy his stewardship inspired. As Reuters sums him up, Doerflein was "a good-natured man with a thick black beard [who] became an improbable sex symbol for his devoted care of Knut."

And, not to be weird about it or anything, but that's a pretty sexy baby bear, too.