THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF POLAR BEAR CUBS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 31, 31 January 1912, Page 2

THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF POLAR BEAR CUBS.

Two Polar bear cubs', a male and a female, were born on Tuesday morning, says the i London “Times” of | December Stir, in the inner den of jthe enclosure >h!t the Zoological arsons occupied by the finel ! pair of Polar bears. As on several previous occasions the mother had neglected her offspring, it had been decided to try to rear the cubs this year w’th a foster-mother.,.,and a warm room had been prepared, but the Polar bear Barbara is extremely wary and suspicious, and it was not until Thursday morning that it was found possible to dure her into thonbnclosiiro for sufficient time ito close -htlio gate and shut her out from the den. When this wap done it,was found .that the two cubs were alive and apparently vigorous. They were at once taken to the foster-mother, a retriever bitch, which had been left with one of her own cubs. The bitch took to them almost at once, sniffed at them, turned them over with her paw, and then began to lick them. In a few minutes they were being suckled and all seemed to |)o going well. In the course of tho day, however, one of the cubs was ill at ease, ind next mbrning was found dead. During Friday the second cub was plainly not doing well and was removed to the house of one of the staff, vvhero it temporarily recovered; hut it died in the course of the night. The post mortem examination in each case showed that tho cause of death was pneumonia, probably contracted soon after birth.

At, first sight it seems unnatural that natives of the Polar regions should succumb to the cold of England. It is to be remembered, howover, that the conditions in captivity differ notably from those in- the wild state. When winter, approaches Polir bears in their native haunts choose some sheltered spot, make a burrow iu the snow, and pass into a state of hibernation. It is under such coalitions that the cubs are born and oass the first few months of their existence nestling against the body of the mother, the heat of whose body maintains a temperature considerably higher than that of an English winter. In captivity the bears lo not hibernate, but remain as acive as in summer, coming out to feed, moving about oven if shut in jheir dens, and leaving the young exposed to the cold. A still more serim;s difference is the absence, in high latitudes, of tho microbes that cause incumonia and other affections of the respiratory organs.

It is not surprising, therefore, that ilthougli Polar bears have been born /cry often in the various European Zoological Gardens, they have very seldom been reared. The Gardens at Dresden long claimed to have had the mly success, but at Stockholm out )f fifteen that have been born eight have been roared to maturity, whilst both at Stuttgart and at Halle hybrids between the brown bear and the Polar bear have boen bred and reared. In some cases the mother has herself reared the young, but thoro has been greater success with a canine foster-mother. Probably the closest approach to the natural conditions would be made if the cubs, immediately after birth, could be placed in an incubator and kept there for a number of months.