Cute Knut and the Berlin Zoo

Our second day in Berlin we decided to visit the zoo. Their current mascot is Knut (K not silent, rhymes with "cute"), a polar bear who turned two the day after our visit. His mother abandoned him at birth, and so the keepers raised him, and all the people of Berlin sort of adopted him. The zoo gift shops were really just polar bear merchandise, there was only a tiny bit of stuff for other animals. We heard on the BBC while we were there though, that the zoo won't be able to afford to keep him as he grows up. They are looking at other zoos who would want the "celebrity" bear.

The zoo is huge, we spent 5 hours wandering around, and we still didn't see all of it, but we were hungry and footsore and decided we'd seen all the really important things. In particular, Laura was thrilled to be separated from a panda by only his glass enclosure.

There were also the usual array of monkeys, zebras, elephants, hippos, big cats, birds, an aquarium, a petting zoo, a nocturnal house... There were some penguins who were pretty cute as well.