Knut may be gone, but there's a chance he may still live on in one way at the Berlin Museum -- stuffed.
"It is true that our taxidermists are working on his corpse and have removed his fur," Gesine Steiner, a spokeswoman for Berlin's Natural History Museum, told Bloomberg. "We haven't yet made a decision on whether we will stuff him and exhibit him. We have to talk to the zoo. We do of course have lots of stuffed zoo animals on show here."
The 4-year-old polar bear became an international star in 2007 after trainer Thomas Doerflein personally fed the bear from a bottle after Knut's mother rejected him.
The Berlin zoo attributed the bear's death to "significant changes in the brain," according to the AP. However, some activists contend it may have been the result of stress stemming from having to share a pen with three other bears, according to USA Today.
While stuffing the bear may pay homage to him, not everyone's so keen on the idea.
From TIME:
Plans to stuff the bear have left several of his fans in dismay. "To stuff Knut is to abuse the feelings of millions of Knut fans all over the world," one fan, Horst Krause, wrote in the zoo's online condolence book. "Knut deserves a worthy burial."