Valentines Day will be the date when this cute polar bear cub will be allowed out of the den where it has lived with its loving mum since being born in the world’s oldest zoo.
The cub that was born in November last year has started to learn to walk in recent weeks as with these scenes at the Schonbrunn Zoo in the Austrian capital Vienna. It is the first cub at the zoo in eight years.
In the video, mother bear Nora can be seen lying alongside the tiny cub as it moves around clearly keen to start exploring outside the den. It is still unknown what the sex is of the cub that was born blind and weighing just half a kilo, making around the size of a hamster.
Zoo Director Stephan Hering-Hagenbeck said: “The cub only slows down when it sleeps, the rest of the time it spends on exploring the interior spaces at the polar bear enclosure in the area not open to the public.”
He said that keepers were now convinced that the cub was ready to go outside, and named 14th February as the day.
Nora gave birth to twin cubs, fathered by a bear named Ranzo, but one of the youngsters did not survive. Male polar bears are not involved in the rearing of their offspring.
In the Arctic, the females spend several months in an isolated snow cave to raise their offspring in the deepest polar winter.
During this time, the mothers do not need food because they have previously eaten a supply of fat.
The cub has not yet been named.
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Story By: Michael Leidig, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
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