It’s un-bear-ably cute news! Scots polar cub is UK’s first for 25 years
THE arrival of the New year is not the only cause for excitement among Scotland’s animal lovers.
For the country’s only female polar bear has delivered a cub – the first to be born in Britain in a quarter of a century.
The mother, victoria, lives at the Highland Wildlife Park in Kincraig, Inverness-shire, which is run by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS).
The RZSS announced the birth yesterday after hearing distinct high-pitched sounds from the bear’s den.
The delivery was described as an ‘outstanding achievement’ – but the RZSS warned the cub faces a perilous first three months, when it is highly susceptible to diseases and at risk of being abandoned.
una Richardson, the park’s head keeper responsible for carnivores, said: ‘We first heard promising noises in the week before Christmas and these have now continued into the new year.
‘Because we don’t have sight inside her cubbing box we can’t be sure if victoria has had more than one cub but we can confirm the birth. While we are absolutely thrilled, we are not celebrating prematurely as polar bear cubs have a high mortality rate in the first weeks of life.’
victoria’s maternity den is closed to visitors, with minimal keeper activity to improve the cub’s chances of survival. They fear disturbing the bears will put the cub at risk, and have not taken photographs.
Newborn polars are blind, about 12 inches long and weigh little more than a guinea pig. They open their eyes at a month old and are entirely dependent on their mothers, feeding on fat-rich milk to grow quickly. They weigh 22-27lb when they leave the den at a couple of months old.
Douglas Richardson, head of living collections at the park, called the birth ‘a tremendous husbandry accomplishment’, with the success ‘based on a radically different approach to their care and husbandry to mirror what would happen in the wild’.
victoria, 21, arrived at the park from Denmark in 2015. The breeding season began last March and she mated with Arktos, ten, one of the park’s two males. He and the other male, Walker, remain on public view.
The breeding window for polar bears is between one and three weeks, and females usually give birth in December or January.
In the wild, females enter snow dens and stay there for up to four months.
victoria has given birth before, to Milak, at Aalborg Zoo in Denmark in 2008.
The last polar bear cub born in the uK was in 1992 at Flamingo land in yorkshire.