Polar Bear Cubs in capitivity

The first polar bear cub to be born after 25 years is in the United Kingdom in Scotland, at the Highlands Wild Life Park.  The first sounds from the cub(s) could be heard on 18 December 2017.
The mother is called Victoria.  Victoria's maternity unit has been closed to ensure her privacy from the visitors.    The keepers are trying to disturb the mother and cub as little as possible.  They make routine checks to see that the water outside the den is not frozen. They are not certain if there is one or two cubs as the video camera in the den was dislodged by Victoria.  The only way the keepers are checking is by using external audio equipment in the den.

 

 

There is only one cub.  This is a video of the cub taking outside the den.  They don't know with its a female or male.


Victoria came from Aalborg Zoo in Denmark in 2017 and is kept in an enclosure about a mile away from the other two males, Arktos and Walker.  She last had cubs in 2008.







The polar bear is polygynous, the female mates with more than one male, therefore the cubs can all have different fathers.






The gestation period for a polar bear is around 6 months. The female has to put on 440 pounds so she can survive being in the den without food for around three months.  Polar bears give birth once every three years. New born polar bears cubs eyes are closed when born and their weight is a little more than a guinea pig.  The cubs weigh about 2 pounds. At a month old their eyes open. Scientist are baffled by the fact that the cubs are born so tiny. They depend entirely on their mother and the fat-rich milk they get from her.  The cubs grow very quickly.  The cubs are around 3 months old when they emerged from the den and by that time they weight 22 to 26 pounds.  Survival rate of the cubs are very low for the first three months of their lives.



 

This birth came after 24 hours of the news that a polar bear cub died at a zoo in Berlin at the age of 26 days.  This cub's mother was called Tonja.  The cub seemed to have died of natural causes.  In march 2017 Tonja cub that was 4 months old at the time of death.  There is no reasons that they could find out why this cub died.  The cub died before they could name her.

 

 

Nora the polar bear cub was born on the 5th of November 2015.  The mother left the den when Nora was 6 days old and never return.  This was at a zoo in Columbia.  The zoo keepers decided to hand rear her.  The video below is a video of Nora. Nora is “a combination of the cub’s parents’ names, Nanuq, and Aurora.  They took keep the male polar bear in the same enclosure as this stresses out the mother and he could kill the cub.

Brumas was a polar bear born November 1919 in United Kingdom and raised successfully.  She was a female but for a long time they thought she was a male.  She died in May 1958.

Pipaluk, a male polar bear, was the first male polar bear born in captivity in Britain, and, like Brumas, became a major celebrity at Regent's Park Zoo in London during early 1968. His name came from an Inuit term meaning "little one". Pipaluk was moved from London to Poland in 1985 when the Mappin Terraces, which housed the bears, was closed. He died in 1990.

The next cubs were Millie and Jason. They came into the world to a similar fanfare at Flamingo Land, North Yorkshire, in 1992. Aged 18 months, they were wrenched from their mother, sedated and dispatched to a fate unknown at a Japanese zoo.

Knut and his twin were also abandoned by their mother in a Berlin Zoo.  Unfortunately Knut's twin brother died.  Knut became a global star and was reared by Thomas

Dörflein.  Knut later died at the age of four.  Knut was the first cub that survived infancy in a Berlin Zoo for more than 30 years.  Knut died on 19 march 2011, after accidentally falling into the enclosure pool while he suffered encephalitis.


Around about that time there was another two in a British public zoo.  A male called Barney and a female called Mercedes.  Barney died in 1996 after he chocked on a plastic bat that was thrown into his pen at the Edinburgh zoo.

Gus, a male polar bear at the Central Park Zoo in New York City from 1988 to 2013, came to media attention in the 1990s when he was seen obsessively swimming in his pool for up to 12 hours a day. The zoo paid an animal behavioural therapist to diagnose Gus' problem;^[the therapist concluded that Gus was "bored and mildly crazy in the way that a lot of people are in New York".  Gus' erratic behaviour tapered off with changes to his habitat and mealtimes; he was also the first zoo animal in history to be treated with Prozac. From the publicity surrounding his diagnosis and treatment, Gus became a symbol of the "neurotic" New Yorker and was the subject of several books and a play.

Binky was a male polar bear at the Alaska Zoo who mauled several zoo visitors after disregard safety bars and signs and got to close in 1994.

Flocke was a female polar bear, born in Nuremberg Zoo, Germany on 11 December 2007.  She was raised by hand.

Inuka a male polar bear was born in a Singapore Zoo in 1990.

Siku, a male polar bear, was born in November 2011. Abandoned by his mother, who produced insufficient milk to feed him, he was put into care at Skandinavisk Dyrepark (the Scandinavian Wildlife Park, Denmark).

Wilbär, a male polar bear, was born at the Wilhelma Zoo in Stuttgart, Germany in 2007.

In 2003, Oxford University biologists found that infant mortality for captive polar bears was around 65%. Those that survived spent a quarter of their day engaged in the kind of pacing that any layperson realises betrays a disturbed beast.