Knut Mania Sweeps the Globe

It's a perfect recipe for "he's so cuuuute" celebrity. Start with a baby polar bear, rejected by his mother and left alone when his twin brother died at the age of four days. Add a devoted human keeper who slept nightly with the tiny white ball of fur and fed him by hand from a bottle. Toss in a storm of outrage when an animal-rights activist reportedly called for the cub to be euthanized because it had become too conditioned to human contact. (The activist denied saying Knut should be killed.) And then put the whole drama before the world via TV cameras and incessant Internet postings.

Thus was created the phenomenon of Knut, the most celebrated polar bear on the planet. Since his birth last December and first public appearance at the Berlin Zoo on Mar. 23, Knut has become an animal superstar—and a money factory. Some 350,000 people have gone to see him at the zoo. Over Easter weekend, the crowds got so thick that visitors were limited to only seven minutes of viewing before being nudged along to the gift shop.