Looking through our recent Weather Pulse blog entries, it's pretty clear the entire Weather Plus team is VERY jazzed that it's spring.

And while it's warmer today than it has been for the last few weeks, it's also drizzly and gray and none of the things that come to mind as winter ends and spring kicks off.

But today for the Web team, spring came alive when my colleague Talia Bluth put together a photo slideshow of the cutest spring baby we've seen: Knut the polar bear cub.

Knut is getting a lot of press right now, in part because he's a polar bear (a species often mentioned in conjunction with the threats of global warming).

Knut was born at the Berlin Zoo in December, and his mother abandoned him. The zookeepers decided to raise him themselves. Animal rights activists are protesting this behavior, as it goes against nature. Out in the wild, animals sometimes abandon their babies for a variety of reasons -- and those babies usually die.

Animal babies abandoned by their mothers may be sick. Or it could be that only the strongest member of the litter thrives, and the parents abandon the rest. Sometimes animals abandon their newborns if there is a drought or food shortage.

So I understand why animal rights activists feel that it's wrong for humans to raise a polar bear cub. (Keep in mind that polar bears will prey on humans.) Going against nature doesn't sound like such a great idea. But in this case, we're dealing with a polar bear cub born in a zoo -- already an unnatural environment for a wild animal.

And here's another element of nature: Knut is as adorable as he is by design. The cuter the baby, the more likely he is to be cared for, whether by his parents or adoptive ones. That's part of nature's genius.