BERLIN (Reuters) - German police detained a 25-year-old prostitute for keeping a three-week-old lamb named Birke as a pet in a Munich brothel, police said in a statement.

The woman was also briefly detained for drug possession - she and her lamb were discovered during a narcotics raid. Prostitution itself is legal in Germany. Keeping a lamb in a brothel evidently is not.

Police said the woman showed them a letter from veterinary authorities laying out the conditions in which a lamb should be raised. Those conditions did not include inside a brothel, so she was forbidden to keep the lamb, police said.

"The lamb was turned over to an animal protection group," the statement said. "During its short stay with police, the lamb felt comfortable and starting drinking from a bottle."

(Reporting by Josephin Schoettler; Editing by Erik Kirschbaum, Larry King)