Sam Doak wrote:
Apparently humans are not the only ones who suffer when fed artifical infant
milk. Can't say I'd want to harvest milk from a mama polar bear, however...
<<
BERLIN - The Berlin Zoo's popular polar bear cub, Knut, is not feeling well
and had his daily public appearance in front of thousands of visitors cut
short Monday after only 30 minutes. ...
Born at the zoo on Dec. 5, Knut - who was rejected by his mother and
hand-raised by zookeepers ...

Sam's post about the german cub came just after I'd read a news item about the latest pair of newborn Sumatran tiger cubs born at Dreamworld on Queensland's Gold Coast.  Sumatran tigers were described as  "the most critically endangered species on earth" (well, that's a value judgement!).  At the time of yesterday's report, the cubs were just over 2 weeks old, and were already weaned form their mothers.  Like previous cubs from endangered species born at Dreamworld, although the mothers were happy to nourish them, they were taken off their mothers very early and hand-fed by the keepers, "so that they can bond with Dreamworld's tiger handlers".  A similar statement was made last time. 
While the intention is so that they will "bond with" their keepers (and so, I assume,  be safer to work with when they are large, toothy animals), the article also talked about how fast they are growing "on a diet of about 250 ml of milk a day", milk meaning, of course, an artificial milk.  Underlying message (even if not intended):  These cubs are from an endangered species and so need something safer than being fed by their mothers.  They are being quarantined from the public in a glass-fronted display for the time being. So perhaps they won't catch infections like the cub in Germany.  Sad, though, that the public isn't seeing them on display feeding from their mothers.  It just reinforces the generations of normalisation of bottles in Australia.
Virginia
in Brisbane, Queensland

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