“Perhaps there was a reason his mother abandoned him.”
That is nature’s way. Maybe the baby bear had a congenital defect.
Natural Selection ignored by the zoo keepers. Nature (i.e. Knut’s mother) rejected the cub at birth because it was not healthy.
Zoo officials (at great tax payer expense) ignored nature and forced care on the animal. Zoo officials turned an unhealthy animal into a zoo pet to generate cash sales.
Now, they wonder why the animal did not survive.