Artist Damien Hirst tried to buy "rather macabre collection of 6,000 stuffed animals". "The menagerie, which includes kittens dressed in Victorian wedding outfits and squirrels smoking and gambling" (the Telegraph) was split up when it was sold, much to the dismay of Hirst and the previous owners.
But who needs a stuffed hamster playing a miniature tuba when you can have Knut? The year-old Berlin polar bear may not be as pristine as he once was, but the sight of a dirty polar bear attacking a wooden candle and a meal of rice, fruit and lettuce is enough to satisfy most picture editors. (See our own picture gallery.) "It became clear that he would have preferred a succulent mammal, perhaps even one of the hundreds of children chanting 'Happy birthday little bear'," says the Times.
"There is nothing little or cuddly any more about Knut... He weighs 112kg, almost as much as his patron, Sigmar Gabriel, the German environment minister." Knut's keeper now keeps his distance. "He remains very cheeky," Thomas Doerflein revealed.
"The other day he charged into the feeding station knocking over two buckets of dead worms and dead mice. I had to spend the rest of the day sorting out the mice from the worms."
This is an edited extract from the Wrap, our daily digest of the papers.
