ONE CUTE ANIMAL PER ZOO, PLEASE

The Berlin Zoo recently showed off Knut, a polar bear cub born last December. Cute? Betcha.

But so was Yan Yan, a 22-year-old giant panda; her name means "The Cute One." Cute no more, however. She's dead, Jim. Spiegel reports:

She was found on Monday afternoon after alarmed visitors reported her lying motionless in her outdoor enclosure where she liked to roll around in the sand and lazily munch on bamboo shoots.

A post mortem showed that she died of heart failure caused by acute constipation, zoo vet Andreas Ochs told the Associated Press. There had been no signs that Yan Yan had been in any pain so it had been impossible to detect that she was constipated, he added.

Pandas can live more than 30 years. Berlin zoo's other Panda, Bao Bao, is 29 and going strong. Yan Yan is being kept in a refrigerated room while officials decide what to do with her. Technically she still belongs to China, which loaned her to the zoo in 1995.

The bear's certainly cuter, but he'll outgrow it.