Unusual Love That Became Legendary – 10 Pictures
It’s not the first time we hear about unconditional love between people and wild animals. For animals raised in different surrounding than wilderness, there’s nothing unusual in becoming friendly with humans. This behavior is especially characteristic for animals in the Zoo. In the end, isn’t it all about the friendship and love? This polar bear, called Knut, was born in Berlin Zoo, 11 years ago. Looking like a small snow ball and rejected by his mother at birth, he was raised by Zookeepers.
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Like a baby
Knut spent his first weeks in an incubator. Still very small and completely without fur, he needed somebody to take care about him. That’s the part in the story where Thomas Dörflein gets involved. He lived in the break room next door and took care of this little bear, bathed, bottle fed and played with him. Living so close was the ideal solution, because Knuts meals were supposed to be in two-hour-space, just like when mother feeds her newborn baby. Imagine you have little polar bear instead of cute baby?
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Just try to leave me!
One of the his best companions and also adopted parent, Thomas Dörflein has created bond so strong with this little bear, that every time he needed to leave the cage where Knut lived, after he has given him food and played a little bit with him, was very hard. Knut got used to Thomas and the time he spent alone was difficult to survive. As he lived in the Zoo, most of his daily activities were planned. Whether he was playing with Thomas, or with soccer ball, the attention he was getting was huge.
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You cannot resist this look
Many wondered how the little Knut has never tried to bite Thomas. However, due to the fact that small animals are not aware of the environment and do not recognize faces, it is impossible to imagine how this relationship is going. However, the picture speaks more than a thousand words. Warm Thomas look and cuddly Knut sniffing can’t fool us. This picture freely dissolves the toughest of hearts.
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Happy birthday!
Everyone celebrates their birthday and love to be the center of attention, so the Zookeepers always try to do something special that day for Knut. On the day of his birthday they would arrange the food in the form of the number of years, instead of birthday cake.
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Nice to meet you!
For a very short time he became worldwide superstar, there is even the phenomenon named after his name – Knutomania. All over the globe people were able to buy toys, books, DVDs or media specials about Knut. As a famous tourist attraction, Knut has brought huge number of people in the Zoo in Berlin. He hasn’t got a special program to animate crowd, he was just doing his usual activities, and it was fun to others. Imagine that you got almost equal publicity as celebrity newborn babies. Shocking and fascinating at the same time!
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Let’s get a score!
As he grew older, from a large number of toys that have been available to him he would eventually always chose a soccer ball. This shouldn’t surprise us, because in his country, Canada, soccer is one of the most popular sports. Young children in the audience were very interested watching stunts with his ball.
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Enough with cameras!
It's normal to be shy sometimes. Especially when you get so much attention from early days, like Knut. There are times when it’s not hard to entertain large crowd of people that come to visit him every day but in the end, it can be exhausting too.
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Bath time!
Just like other polar bears, Knut also likes to spend time in water, cooling off or cleaning his fur. Especially because he gets dirty so often playing in the sand and avoiding the fact that polar bears in Arctic Circle try very hard to stay clean, unlike him.
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Knut book ‘How One Little Polar Bear Captivated The World’?
The Book “How one little polar bear captivated the world” was written by Juliana and Craig Hatkoff. The book is adjusted for children, it’s photobook, because it’s combination of pictures of Knut and couple of sentences about his life. It’s not necessary to talk about how many copies of this book were sold. Pictures used in this book were chosen to show similarity in early life of one little bear and human baby, and it worked. People loved this book, and loved Knut.
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Image sources:
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- bit.ly/2iN2OTh