zoos

Keepers of Knut, the baby polar bear whose antics warmed the hearts of millions at the Berlin Zoo, admit he has become a publicity-addled psychopath.

One of J. M. Coetzee's characters says the history of zoos is an extension of the history of warfare. The first zoos erected fences less to protect man from beast than to protect beast from man. Zoo-goers viewed the animals as POWs in a long inter-species war, on display to be jeered and attacked as representatives of the enemy. This hostility survives today in the sick exhibition of Knut, the cute bear-orphan who has been the object of exploitation for the first fifteen months of what one hopes will be a short life. MORE