A polar bear attacked a woman at Berlin Zoo Friday afternoon after she climbed a fence and jumped into its habitat during feeding time.The woman was severely injured and was being treated at a hospital. It's unclear why the woman entered the bear habitat, but police issued her a citation for trespassing.
Source
(via Blame it on the Voices)
Eden TV, a new UK-based natural history TV channel has recently begun broadcasting. To celebrate their launch, the network built a 16-foot-high sculpture of a mother polar bear and her cub stranded on an iceberg. Also meant to increase awareness about the plight of the polar bear and their dwindling habitat as a result of climate change, the sculpture was sent to float down the Thames river.Read more ...
(via Inhabitat)
This morning, my car's thermostat said that the outside temperature was -5 !
Even for Knut, that might be too cold.
Hey, Al Gore!
What happened to that global warming?
Even for Knut, that might be too cold.
Hey, Al Gore!
What happened to that global warming?
Even the polar bears are going green ...
Three polar bears at the Higashiyama Zoo in Nagoya, central Japan, changed their colors in July after swimming in a pond with an overgrowth of algae, prompting many questions from visitors concerned about whether the animals are sick or carrying mold, a zoo official said.
(AP Photo/Kyodo News, Shuzo Shikano)
Source: boston.com
Three polar bears at the Higashiyama Zoo in Nagoya, central Japan, changed their colors in July after swimming in a pond with an overgrowth of algae, prompting many questions from visitors concerned about whether the animals are sick or carrying mold, a zoo official said.(AP Photo/Kyodo News, Shuzo Shikano)
Source: boston.com
The Interior Department on Wednesday designated the polar bear as threatened with extinction - it has been added to the endangered species list.
Polar bears are the first species to be designated as threatened with extinction because of global warming.
The designation under the Endangered Species Act requires the agency to identify critical habitat to be protected and to form a strategy to assist the bear population's recovery.
Source: LA Times
Polar bears are the first species to be designated as threatened with extinction because of global warming.The designation under the Endangered Species Act requires the agency to identify critical habitat to be protected and to form a strategy to assist the bear population's recovery.
Source: LA Times
Meet three-month-old twin male polar bear cubs, born in November at the Schoenbrunn Zoo in Vienna.Source: Daily Mail
She's ten weeks old and weights 16 pounds. Watch the video of cute little Flocke.
This is so cute your teeth will hurt from watching it . . .
Germany named its latest furry superstar "Flocke", or "Snowflake" on Friday, sending the media into a frenzy which echoed "Knut-mania" in Berlin last year.
A naming competition for the nearly six-week-old polar bear cub launched by the city of Nuremberg received 50,000 emails, causing a server meltdown at the zoo as entries flooded in from around the globe.
REUTERS/Handout/Tiergarten Nuernberg/Stadt Nuernberg
The Nuremberg Zoo polar bear cub which was saved from its mother who wasn't paying sufficient care, gets a public airing.
Zoo officials in Nuremberg announced Wednesday that Germany's new polar bear cub is probably a female. The cub's eyes are not yet open and its sexual organs not completely developed, so there's still a chance she could be a he, the Nuremberg zoo's deputy director Helmut Maegdefrau told reporters.But the yet-unnamed 4-week-old cub - taken from its mother, Vera, on Tuesday amid concerns she could harm or even kill the newborn - is "lively, strong and well-fed," Maegdefrau said.
Four keepers are caring for the baby bear, who weighed in at 3.75 pounds, feeding it high-fat milk every four hours. "So far, it can only crawl a little," Maegdefrau said, noting that the cub does little more at the moment than sleep.
Another polar bear at Nuremberg, Vilma, gave birth around the same time as Vera but is believed to have killed and eaten her cubs earlier this week because they were sick.
The new cub will not be returned to its mother out of fear that Vera might eat it. The controversial decision to hand raise the cub was made after Vera was seen carrying the cub around the enclosure in her jaws.
Source
There are more photos of the cub and mom Vera at The Daily Mail.
After receiving and reviewing nearly 5,000 name suggestions for the male polar bear cub at Brookfield Zoo, Chicago Zoological Society (CZS) staff have selected a name: Hudson.The cub, who now weighs just over 70 pounds, can be seen daily with his mom, Arki. Over the past several weeks, zookeepers have been slowly adding water to the bears’ pool. By early June, they hope to have it all the way filled so Arki can begin to teach Hudson how to swim.
It is estimated that between 22,000 and 25,000 polar bears live in the wild, although exact numbers are not known in their natural habitat of the circumpolar Arctic: U.S. (Alaska), Canada, Russia, Greenland, and Norway. In February 2005, several conservation organizations petitioned the U.S. Department of the Interior to list polar bears on the “threatened” species list of the Endangered Species Act. In late 2006, the Secretary of the Interior announced that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service would be gathering additional information and scientific data during the next 12 months before making its final decision whether to list the species on the threatened list.