Meet the New Knut

First Coast News: The Louisville Zoo will soon be home to an orphaned polar bear cub that received national attention when she was found on Alaska's North Slope in April by employees of ConocoPhillips.

The 5-month-old Qannik (pronounced Ken'ick) is scheduled to arrive by the end of June and will remain off exhibit for some time to adjust to her surroundings in the new Glacier Run development, zoo officials said. Qannik means "snowflake" in the Inupiat language and it is also the name of the oil field where she was found.

The cub's journey from the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage to Louisville has been dubbed "Operation Snowflake." It is the product of a two-month collaboration among the Alaska Zoo and Louisville Zoo, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Polar Bears International and UPS.

"It was determined the best placement for this little cub would be Louisville, where both her physical and psychological needs could be met," said Dr. Randi Meyerson, the coordinator of the Polar Bear Species Survival Plan of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Qannik was born in January in a snow den. She was first spotted on Alaska's North Slope in February with her mother and sibling. Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey placed a radio monitoring collar on the mother and were tracking her and the two cubs before the collar slipped off. In late April, Qannik was spotted again, this time alone.

An unsuccessful aerial search was conducted to locate the mother. It is unknown why Qannik was separated from her mother and sibling but eventually the cub was again sighted near the ConocoPhillips site where she was rescued.

Countless hours of planning have gone in to preparing for Qannik's trip from the Alaska Zoo to Louisville. Qannik will be traveling in the next few days with a special team of curators and caretakers from both the zoos in Louisville and Anchorage. The bear will be flown on a UPS Boeing 747-400.

Glacier Run is now home to Arki, a 26 year-old polar bear who came to Louisville from the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, and a family of three grizzly bears.

Meanwhile, Louisville Zoo officials on Wednesday confirmed the birth of a female giraffe born early Monday morning. She weighed 140 pounds and is about 5-foot-10. Mariah is her mother and Walker is her father. She does not have a name yet. Officials said they aren't sure when the young giraffe will go on exhibit. The zoo now has three male and three female giraffes.

Kiev Zoo Compared to Concentration Camp

Fox DC: An Indian elephant called Boy, the pride of the Kiev Zoo, collapsed and died in his enclosure. Around the same time, Maya the camel succumbed to a digestive illness and Theo the zebra died after crashing into a metal fence.

And there's more, much more.

The animals just keep on dying at the Kiev Zoo, a place one activist has likened to a concentration camp for those with fur and feathers. Animal welfare groups say dozens if not hundreds of animals have died at the zoo in recent years due to malnutrition, a lack of medical care and mistreatment -- and some suspect that corruption is at the heart of the problem.

Naturewatch, a British-based animal welfare group, is among the organizations calling for the 100-year-old zoo to be closed and its animals sent elsewhere in Europe.

"The Kiev Zoo will never attain any basic standards, it's so far removed from any zoo in Europe," said John Ruane of Naturewatch. "The conditions have been absolutely horrendous and no matter how many more directors were appointed the situation still remained the same."

New managers appointed in October said that nearly half of the zoo's animals either died or mysteriously disappeared over two years under their predecessors, and a government audit found that thousands of dollars were misspent as animals were illegally sold and funds earmarked for their food and care disappeared. Ukrainian prosecutors have also opened an investigation.

But despite the management change, the zoo's animals are still dying.

Other violations included the purchase of medication for already deceased apes, paying for hyenas that were never shipped to the zoo, the illegal sale of 12 macaques, the unrecorded sale of zoo tickets and the misallocation of funds earmarked for feeding zoo animals. The violations totaled 1.6 million hryvna ($200,000 or euro140,000), according to Irina Parkhomenko, spokeswoman for the government auditing agency.

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Report: Knut Died From Brain Damage

AsiaOne: Berlin's superstar polar bear Knut, who died suddenly over the weekend aged just four, likely fell victim to undiagnosed brain damage, his zoo said Tuesday. Berlin Zoo said in a statement that a preliminary necropsy conducted Monday revealed "significant changes to the brain, which could be seen as the reason for the sudden death of the polar bear".

It said no other organ damage had been identified but that the examination of the cadaver was continuing. Knut, who was found lifeless in the pool in his enclosure on Saturday afternoon, had shot to fame as a cuddly cub after being abandoned by his mother and reared by hand.

The first public appearance of "Cute Knut" attracted 100 camera crews from around the world and the cub generated millions of euros (dollars) for Berlin Zoo in lucrative merchandising and extra entrance fees.

But once he grew into a strapping adolescent and then adult, animal welfare groups began to worry that he was displaying abnormal behaviour because of all the attention. He would sway to and fro and even imitate people taking photos by lifting a paw to his face.

Devastated fans have been leaving flower bouquets, written tributes and photos of Knut at his former den at the zoo, while an online condolence book has drawn more than 4,000 messages. Meanwhile, a fan organisation started collecting donations for a memorial to the bear.

"Knut will live on in the hearts of many visitors but we want to create something lasting for generations to come with this memorial so that the uniqueness of this animal personality will endure," the chairman of the Friends of the Capital Zoos, Thomas Ziolko, said.

Farewell Knut

Spiegel Online: Berlin Zoo's celebrity polar bear Knut is dead. The zoo's bear expert, Heiner Klös told the German news agency DPA that the bear collapsed and died on Saturday while in the water in the zoo's polar bear enclosure. Klös told DPA that between 600 and 700 visitors had witnessed Knut's death. The zoo's staff were shocked, he said.

The cause of death is currently unclear. According to Klös, the polar bear was alone in the compound at the time. The three other bears that shared his enclosure -- his mother Tosca and two other bears named Katyusha and Nancy -- had already been shut in. The zoo plans to perform an autopsy on Knut to clarify the cause of death.

"It's terrible," Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit told the Berlin newspaper BZ. "He had a special place in all of our hearts. He was the star of Berlin Zoo.

Knut, who recently turned four, became world famous when his mother rejected him shortly after his birth in December 2006. Part of his fame was due to the bear's close relationship to Thomas Dörflein, the photogenic zookeeper who became his replacement mother and hand-reared the cub. Dörflein died unexpectedly in September 2008 at the age of 44.