Knut & Thomas

Knut was born at the Berlin Zoo to 20-year-old Tosca, a former circus performer from East Germany who was born in Canada, and her 13-year-old mate Lars, who was originally from the Tierpark Hellabrunn in Munich. After an unproblematic gestation time, Knut and his unnamed brother were born on 5 December 2006. Tosca rejected her cubs for unknown reasons, abandoning them on a rock in the polar bear enclosure. Zoo keepers rescued the cubs by scooping them out of the enclosure with an extended fishing net,but Knut's brother died of an infection four days later. Knut was the first polar bear to have been born and survive in the Berlin Zoo in over thirty years. Only the size of a guinea pig, he spent the first 44 days of his life in an incubator before zoo keeper Thomas Dörflein began raising the cub. Knut's need for around-the-clock care required that Dörflein not only sleep on a mattress next to Knut's sleeping crate at night, but also play with, bathe, and feed the cub daily. Knut's diet began with a bottle of baby formula mixed with cod liver oil every two hours, before graduating at the age of four months to a milk porridge mixed with cat food and vitamins. Dörflein also accompanied Knut on his twice-daily one-hour shows for the public and therefore appeared in many videos and photographs alongside the cub. As a result, Dörflein became a minor celebrity in Germany and was awarded Berlin's Medal of Merit in honor of his continuous care for the cub. Thomas Dörflein died of a heart attack on September 22, 2008. He was 44 years old. R.I.P.

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YouTube | September 28, 2008

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