Meet little Buddy, Bearizona’s newest rescue cub
Members of the public can meet Buddy, a 15-pound bear cub, at Bearizona on Friday. The cub was rescued from a Tucson residential neighborhood earlier this month.
According to a post on X from officials of the drive-thru wild park, the cub has left both them and the Arizona Game & Fish Department “stumped” due to its tiny stature and sudden appearance.
“Bear cubs in the United States are all born close to January or February, so this little fella should be around 70 pounds this time of year,” Chief Operating Officer of Bearizona Wildlife Park Dave O’Connell said in the statement.
AZ Game & Fish spokesperson Mark Hart added that a 15-pound bear should be around four or five months old, which raises questions of how the 1-year-old cub not only survived his weight in “relatively healthy condition” but somehow made the trek off the Catalina Mountains after being orphaned or abandoned.
“If it got separated from its mother, regardless of why in the backcountry, how did a bear that small get all the way off the mountain?” Hart questioned. “We would have thought that a bear that size would have been picked off by a predator. A coyote, a mountain lion, or even another bear.”
Adding to the mystery, O’Connell noted that Buddy doesn’t have the normal fear of humans a bear typically should have, meaning he could have been illegally fed by someone. This could also explain why he’s so small.
“If you care, leave it there. A fed bear is a dead bear,” O’Connell stated — a key message when caring about the overall well-being of wild animals.
In this case, however, the bear’s abnormal fear of humans kept it from being euthanized, according to the post.
Following a veterinary checkup, the public will be able to meet “Buddy” in his new quarantine area at Bearizona.