From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The
evil that men do lives after them. The good is
oft interred with their bones.” –William
Shakespeare
Princess Antoinette Monegasque of Monaco,
90, died on March 18, 2011 at the Princess
Grace Hospital in Monaco. The elder sister of
Prince Rainier of Monaco, Antoinette was best
known during the first two-thirds of her life for
involvement in scandalous liaisons, failed
marriages, the death of her third husband–ten
years younger than she –after just six weeks of
marriage, and a failed attempt to put her three
children born from wedlock ahead of Rainier in
the royal succession. Exiled from Monaco in the

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
 
“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do
lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”
–William Shakespeare
 

Fateh Singh Rathore, 79, died on March 1, 2011, two weeks
after receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Worldwide Fund
for Nature in recognition of 50 years of work to protect Indian
tigers. The son of a police officer, “Tiger Man” Rathore became a
forest ranger at the Alwar Game Reserve, now Sariska National Park,
circa 1955. In January 1961 Rathore was sent to the nearby Sawai
Madhopur Game Sanctuary to organize a tiger shoot for Queen Elizabeth
II of Great Britain and her husband Prince Philip. This experience

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

Knut, 4, a polar bear who was rejected by his mother soon
after birth at the Berlin Zoo on December 5, 2006, but was raised
by his keepers, died suddenly on March 19, 2011 from unknown
causes. “He was by himself in his compound, he was in the water,
and then he was dead,” bear keeper Heiner Kloes told Associated
Press. “He was not sick. We don’t know why he died,” pending a
necropsy that was to be done on March 28. Knut’s first chief
keeper, Thomas Doerflein, 44, was found dead in his apartment of a
heart attack on September 22, 2008. A 25-year Berlin Zoo employee,
Doerflein from March 2007 to July 2007 exhibited Knut to the public
in a popular play-wrestling act. The act ended when zoo management
decided that Knut had become too large for Doerflein to play with
safely. The “Cute Knut” phenomenon reportedly boosted Berlin Zoo
attendance by 27% in 2007, and increased revenues by $10 million.
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:

Kaankata, 35, an Indian rhino who lost an ear to a
poacher’s bullet and afterward charged humans on sight, died
peaceably in Orang National Park on February 16, 2011. Kaankata
once destroyed a forestry official’s car, and another time chased a
poacher for two kilometers, division forest officer Sushil Daila
told The Telegraph, of Kolkata.
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do
lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”
–William Shakespeare
Dick King-Smith, 88, died in his sleep on January 4, 2011
at his home near Bath, England. Smith turned to writing after World
War II military service, 20 years of farming, stints selling
firefighting equipment and working in a shoe factory, and finally
teaching, after he completed a degree in education at Bristol
University at age 53 in 1975. King-Smith’s first of more than 100
books, The Fox Busters, appeared in 1978. Concerning three
chickens who repeatedly foil the efforts of foxes to eat them, The
Fox Busters inspired a 26-episode Cosgrove Hall animated TV series of
the same name, aired in 1999-2000. King-Smith’s books, mostly
about talking animals, sold more than 15 million copies in all. The

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2011:

Animal Obituaries

Old Man,  32,  a naked mole rat born in Kenya,  died on Thanksgiving morning 2010 at the Barshop Institute for Longevity & Aging Studies on the Texas Research Park campus near San Antonio. Old Man was the senior member of the University of Texas Health Science Center’s colony of about 2,000 naked mole rats.  Captured with 75 kin in a sweet potato field in 1980 by physiologist Rochelle Buffenstein,  Old Man traveled with Buffenstein to the University of Cape Town in South Africa,  then to the City College of New York in Harlem,  arriving in San Antonio in 2007.  Naked mole rats,  who live to an average age of 26,  “in many ways confound what scientists think they know about how diseases progress and why living things age,”  Buffenstein told Richard A. Marini of the San Antonio Express News.  For example,  naked mole rats rarely develop cancer,  and although they develop the same type of brain plaque found in Alzheimer’s disease victims,  they do not suffer similar cognitive decline. Read more