"Knut is a psychopath and will never mate, say experts", The Independent. Knut is also a polar bear. What's more, the text of the article doesn't really seem to justify the psychopath claim.
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Headline of the Day
25 Jan 2008 04:08 pm
Comments (15)
I saw that article yesterday and also thought "psychopath" was an odd choice of word. Maybe there's a translation issue. But the point seems valid: if you take an animal that is designed by millions of years of evolution to function in a certain way in a certain environment, and abruptly transplant it to a completely different environment that lacks or actively frustrates many of those evolved characteristics, it's only to be expected that you will produce a kind of severe mental illness in the animal.
Being a psychopath hasn't stopped a lot of humans from mating.
You have kids, Steve? There should be laws....
"psychopath who will never mate"? I want to see a photograph of that zoologist. I suspect projection here.
He has that psychopathic look of Monty Python's killer rabbit.
There was a polar bear at the Bronx zoo a few years ago who spent the entire day walking around in a circle, sitting for about 4 seconds, then getting up again to walk in that circle. It was clearly an unhappy/unwell bear.
Aren't all polar bears psychopaths?
Germans scare me...
Stop bitin' Spackerman!
Terrible piece of journalism. No basis for any of the claims, which cry out for explanation.
I guess my question is how Knut is doing on his own terms. If his mind is warped so that he enjoys performing for crowds, that seems like a desire he can typically satisfy given his circumstances, which is all for the best. On the other hand, if he's just doing it not because he enjoys it but because he's disturbed and anxious and unhappy and that's how he responds to stress, then that's another story. I'm not sure if bear psychologists can tell the difference -- measuring seretonin levels, compared to ordinary bears, and/or comparing times when he's surrounded by crowds compared to times when no one's looking? Whether he's acting as is natural for a polar bear seems not to be as important to me as whether he's having a good life by his own standards.
Of course, my view is probably the sort of thing that drives people who actually know the scientific facts about polar bear psychology crazy since it's probably riddled with faulty assumptions based on ignorance or something of the sort, and is based on airy speculations about Knut's internal life about which I know nothing.
Well, they had to pull a tiger cub away from its mother because another two cubs by another mother had been eaten because she was stressed and they were afraid for this one.
So I'm not surprised a polar bear, one of the most aggressive of bears, would be "psycho".
Look at gorillas in captivity. They have sex something like 48 times in 72 hours as a stress reliever.
Matt blogs. What's the difference?
They can't have it both ways.
Zoos justified their existence by saying they had become gene banks for species that may not be able to live in a dangerous wild with decreasing available habitat.
You can't turn around and say we are saving species according to their biodiversity value, oh and also how they score on the cuteness scale.
Its an essential problem in the environmentalist movement between those people motivated by emotions, and those motivated by empirical measures such as ecological value. Even the WWF is more than happy to feature panda bears, humpback whales, and elephants on their gear, when it is often cichlids and South African shrews that are more important from an ecological and risk of extinction perspective.
Re ""Knut is a psychopath and will never mate, say experts", The Independent. Knut is also a polar bear "
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Yeah, but he's a GERMAN polar bear --who's a psychopath and who may have sexual issues. But loves playing to crowds of humans and getting loud applause.
Hmmm. Just wait until he grows a toothbrush moustache and starts denouncing the zookeepers as subhumans.
Comments closed February 08, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Being a psychopath hasn't stopped a lot of humans from mating.
Posted by Steve Sailer | January 25, 2008 4:24 PM