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.

Housecat or Harbor Seal?

Sometimes in the summer, it's hard to tell.

Naturalists Can Be Cruel

They find a new species of dolphin, and then they say terrible things about the way they look.

To take arms against a sea of troubles

I went to the beach at Fire Island yesterday with a few friends. After a three-hour journey of multiple train interchanges and a ferry ride where loud old people passed around a jug of bloody mary, through the gauntlet of the little marina where the supertanned party with their blenders, we arrived at our narrow spit of grassy bluffs and open skies. It's a lovely, quiet beach where people mostly behave responsibly.

The water was calm and clean, and gets deep quite close to the shore, which means you can have a nice little swim right under the lifeguard's nose. This was of particular comfort after last week's sad rash of beach drownings. As we splashed down into that cool, jade green, the friend who had gone in first noted that she'd seen some jellyfish a few yards over. But the water looked clear, so we dove in, only somewhat warily.

After a few minutes, I did feel a sharp little sting on my leg. Since I never felt anything brush past me, and couldn't see jellyfish anywhere nearby, I thought I was just being paranoid. Then I felt another sting on my arm. Then my ribcage. The stinging was mild and left no marks, but it stuck around in a disconcerting way. The others were feeling it too.

A fat man with a wonderful mustache noticed our discomfort and confusion. He told us that from what he'd heard, there had been an infestation of purple jellyfish at this beach the day before. The wind and tides had swept most of them away, but left behind a lot of jellyfish eggs. "They call them lice," he told us.

"Now when you say 'lice,' and when you say 'jellyfish eggs,' do you mean that they're burrowing under our skin to reproduce by the thousands inside our bodies?" I asked. He sort of shrugged his shoulders. I took this to mean no, so we kept swimming. But eventually, too many spots on our torsos, legs, and arms bore these sharp little pangs, and we got worried. We left the water to go bask in the sun again like lazy harbor seals. (Lazy harbor seals with rigorous sunscreen application routines and a big bag of Doritos.)

We'd been so focused on checking the weather to plan our beach day that we had failed to keep up with world animal news. If we'd paid attention, we might have known that vast armies of jellyfish have recently been invading beaches all over the world.

Warmer sea temperatures, the overfishing of jellyfish's natural predators, and increased pollution have all led to this population explosion. Writing in the New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal calls jellyfish "the cockroaches of the open waters, the ultimate maritime survivors who thrive in damaged environments."

The stinging was gone after maybe fifteen minutes of sun-dozing, so we ventured back out into the water a little while later. Again that ecstasy of perfect ocean swimming tempered by the onslaught of mystery needlings. When I caught a nematocyst in the face, it was time to head to dry land for good. Just a couple hours later, I was contributing to the ocean's decline with a big plate of cod and chips. Sorry about that.

Priorities. Animals.

I hardly know where to begin.

It's been such a heady week in World Animal News, what with a monster washing up on Montauk's shores, and the appearence of a rotundy cat at a Camden shelter. I think we will come to these stories in time, but let's start slowly. Let's start with the thing that matters most: interspecies mothering.

I posted the photo last night without explanation because I was tired, and surely you already know the facts. Three white tiger cubs at a Kansas zoo were abandoned by their mother. The zookeepers brought in a golden retreiver who had just weaned her puppies. The golden retriever nurses and cleans the tiger cubs, and one of the greatest moments in the history of animals brands its tender image upon our hearts. Here's the AP's coverage.