Polar Bears showing us the way…..............
…By going green -literally
Unlike the most common use of the word ‘green’ i.e. to work to work in order to stop global warming, in this case the bears have really turned green. Three polar bears in Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in central Japan changed their colour to green puzzling visitors and zoo-keepers. Confused visitors shot a string of questions at the zoo officials.
The sight of green polar bears has prompted many questions from visitors concerned about whether the animals are sick or carrying mold, said zoo official, Masami Kurobe. "Visitors seem to be shocked by the color, and we are asked every day why they are so green," he said.
High temperatures in July and August and less-frequent water changes because of the zoo's conservation efforts caused an algae growth in the bear pond and safety moat, Kurobe said.
Algae that enters hollow spaces in the bears' fur is hard to rinse off, he said.
The bears are expected to return to their natural color when the algae growth subsides in November, Kurobe said
The bears are expected to return to their natural color when the algae growth subsides in November, Kurobe said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/07/polar-bears-turn-green-in_n_124662.html
Safe & Sound
 
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Turning To Cannibals
We get to have a sigh of relief after a neglected polar bear cub was saved from his mothers’ mouth. Though now we can see that it is having a nice sleep, the nightmare which it has survived has been a traumatic event both for her and the animal lovers around the world.
What here seems to be a playful and caring mother is in fact a mother that might have eaten up her offspring. This intelligent decision to remove the cub from her potentially dangerous mother came after a long experiment in the captivity of the zoo.
An attempt to force the bears to raise its cubs as nature intended have already gone in vane. Actually two cubs have been eaten up by their confused mother in such experiments.
Even when the officials later realized that the mother had failed to bond with her offspring the officials still kept the poor cub with her unconcerned mother they decided to leave the cub with her so that both of them could develop a relationship and cub was brought up by his mother just like in nature.
But the officials forgot that in nature the cubs whose mothers cannot take care of them, are killed and eaten up-protein is not to be wasted when the carnivores have to survive temperatures of -70c.
Officials became worried when it was found that Vera, the mother of the bear cub, wasn’t feeding the cub and had also hidden it away from the humans in an artificial cave. The zookeepers feared that the mother was following the same trend like Wilma the mother bear who ate her two cubs. Due to frustration and distress Vera had started holding her cub from his neck and started throwing it around.
A REALLY CRUEL MOM
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These are pictures are of the unkind mother bear..... |
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....... trying to throw her cub around |
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Another Cannibalistic Act
Though they soon took away the cub from Vera in Wilma’s case it was a bit different.
Wilma’s cub was also facing starvation and this news ,spread all over the world like fire. As radio phone-ins and internet sites were bombarded with pleas to save the tiny animals, deputy director Helmut Maegdefrau insisted they would not intervene.
"If you don't let the mothers practice, they'll never learn how to bring up their cubs," he said.
"If we were to keep checking, we would disturb them and make it more likely that something goes wrong."
Despite saying this something got really very ‘wrong’. On a sunny Monday morning zoo staff heard Wilma pawing at the gates of her den, where it was believed she was raising her litter. Unfortunately the keepers assumed that the cubs were content and happy hence there weren’t any cries from the cubs.
But this assumption might have caused the cubs their life. Later, the cubs were not seen and Wilma’s customarily ravenous appetite had also disappeared and the obvious conclusion was drawn.
The report abov and pictures on the right by-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-506946/Polar-bear-cub-saved-mothers-jaws-snoozes-happily-care-new-keeper.html
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