Saturday, July 28, 2018

A Tale of Two Melons


Anana with her personal watermelon

It was Members' Morning at the Cincinnati Zoo, and many of the animals got treats and enrichment. Since it was bright and early in the day, and cool, the animals were active. 


Little One
Anana and Little One each got a watermelon and a pile of ice. But then Anana started to wonder if Little One's watermelon was sweeter and juicier. She kept looking over in his direction. Did she dare?


Anana chews on her melon
 
Then she sees that Little One has a melon too, way over on the other side.
 
Little One, on the other side of the enclosure, has almost finished his melon
 
Anana makes her way over to Little One and his melon.

Little One, in no uncertain terms, defends his melon remains.
 So Anana backs off.

But then Little One decides he doesn't want that melon after all, and leaves.

Anana slowly and sneakily works her way back over to Little One's melon,
innocently resting on a barrel on the way.

Yes! she has the coveted watermelon.
Anana looks so smug as she eats what is left of Little One's melon. 

She checks to see what Little One is doing.
 He is actually on the other side of the enclosure,
 eating her abandoned melon.
 
Little One has a lot more melon this way, so he is happy.


A fine summertime treat for all. 

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

The boys' club at Yorkshire Wildlife Park

Pixel and Nissan at play

It is an unusual and wonderful arrangement for polar bears at Yorkshire Wildlife Park. Instead of the usual single polar bear, or a male and female, YWP has four male polar bears living together, soon to be five male bears this fall.

Victor
The patriarch of the group, Victor, has been retired from breeding as he has already sired many cubs. The other three are young males, just on the brink of adulthood.


Victor guards his food from young Nobby
The fifth bear arriving this fall is an older bear, the last polar bear in Korea, from a zoo where they are wisely giving up keeping polar bears.

All during the spring breeding season, and well into the summer, the four bears were kept in two separate areas. While Nobby and Pixel had been great playmates, with the coming of Spring, Nissan became very possessive of Pixel's attentions and would chase away and threaten Nobby or Victor if they wanted to play with Pixel. Even if they were the same size, you could tell which was which by their body language. Nissan was always guarding the much larger Pixel.




Pixel on the right, with Nissan
While Nissan and Pixel share an enclosure, senior bear Victor and young Nobby  have had to work on their relationship by spending time in a second area. Previously Victor was quite stern with Nobby and his young companion would stay away. Now they are much more tolerant of each other's company.

Nobby playing by himself with a water toy
Nobby is also good at playing by himself, finding some toys and swimming about in one of the big ponds, playing his own little games.


Pixel and Nissan in one of the sheltering caves
Recently, with breeding season over, the four bears are visiting back and forth somewhat and getting reacquainted. Nobby and Pixel can be playmates again. Maybe, if Nissan allows it.

Victor being in charge over young Nobby
Victor was born in 1998 in Rostock, and has fathered 12 surviving cubs, plus grandchildren, so has been retired to Yorkshire as the senior gentleman of the group, as his genes are well represented in the European polar bear family. He will be 20 years old this fall, still young, but he acts as if he were much older but still enjoying the bounty of life.

Pixel and Nissan

Pixel is much larger than Nissan, but Nissan is dominant
Pixel and his twin sister Noordje were born in Nuenen, the Netherlands, in November of 2012, so Pixel is now five and a half years old. Their parents are Canadian wildborn Frimas and father Henk, one of Huggies' triplets. Henk's father is Victor, so Pixel is now living with his grandfather.

Pixel and Nissan

Nissan in front, Pixel in back
Nissan was born in the Gosudarstvenny Zoological Park in Russia in December of 2013 so is four and a half years old. His parents are wildborn Dumka and Moscow born Nord (brother of Vera).

Nissan, closest, Pixel facing us

Pixel and Nissan. The central holding area can be seen behind them.

Nissan and Pixel  with melon that was tossed into the water by keepers. In this way, the bears must forage for their food as they would in the wild.
Nobby and his twin sister Nela were born in Munich in December of 2013, so are the same age as Nissan. Their mother is Giovanna, and their father was the late Yoghi, both Italian bears. 

Video: Nobby playing


Nobby is good a playing by himself.

The keepers provide a variety of interesting toys.

Nobby with a log in the big pond.

The enclosures have sheltering caves to provide shade
 in summer and protection from wind in the winter.
 Here is Nobby.

Nobby at play He has just hauled the blue canister out of the pond.

Pixel's twin sister Noordje and Nobby's twin sister Nela are now living together, with Bremerhaven sisters Lale and Lili in Emmen, the Netherlands in another newly built zoo. At this zoo, there are only young girl polar bears at Emmen. Noordje is the oldest.

Victor with his meaty snack. Nobby comes near but won't dare take it.
Victor was the first to arrive at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, in August of 2014. Victor's grandson Pixel came next, in March of 2015. Nissan arrived later that year in October. Nobby came in February of 2016.

A fifth polar bear will be arriving in November. Tongki, a 24 year old male, has been living in a too small enclosure in Everland Theme Park south of Seoul Korea, but he will be coming to YWP to enjoy good companionship and wild open spaces.


Victor approaches and Nobby runs away.
Project Polar is an innovative habitat for the bears, based on the spacious natural habitats at Highlands Wildlife Park in Scotland.

 Yorkshire Wildlife Park is built on a former farm visitor center, and the vision was to provide habitats for rescued zoo animals, and other zoo animals needing a home. It opened in 2009 with a hundred acres.  

Several of the 13 rescued Romanian lions.
There are eight left, living in several separated areas.
In February, 2010, the park rescued 13 Romanian lions from desperate circumstances, and gave them a 10 acre home. 

Land of the Tigers opened in 2011, followed by Leopard Heights, the largest leopard enclosure in the world. Here you can see the extremely rare Amur Leopard.

Amur Leopard

The entrance to the polar bear area.
Project Polar, one of the largest habitats for polar bears in the world, opened in the summer of 2014 with the arrival of Victor.

Ringed lemur family. Two of the moms have babies right now.
YWP also has a wonderful lemur walk-through habitat, African painted dogs, several black rhinos, giraffes, zebras,  recently arrived okapis, and so much more.

Makibo, the black rhino with the frilly ears.

One of the Amur tigers, one of the ladies, I believe.
The polar bears are currently enjoy three large rolling habitats with pools, and a central holding area, and the park is creating a fourth habitat.
Pixel and Nissan in the wanter.
During my visit, most of the fun was with watching Pixel walk about and Nissan guard him, rarely leaving his beloved friend. They would spar and fight and play. Nissan would get very jealous when Nobby was near the fence, and would try to get Pixel away. Nobby would stand by the fence, curious, but also wanting to play with Pixel, his old playmate.

Pixel leads the way, Nissan is not far behind.
Nobby wants to play too,
 but it would be too dangerous when Nissan is so possessive of Pixel.
This was in May.
 At present the four bears are being reintroduced to each other.


The keepers suspect that this is because the young boys have no female bears, and are practicing courtship behavior anyway. Nissan seems to be the most sexually mature of the three youngsters. Nobby is behind them in development.




Pixel
Pixel, the oldest of the three, weighs 500 Kilo,, and Nissan is 360 kilo. You can really see the difference. Nobby weighs 330 kilo, and old Victor is the largest, lumbering about at 630 kilo.

With the springtime mating season over, and hormones stabilizing, the four bears are being introduced to each other. Pixel and Victor are enjoying roughhousing. Nobby is also happy to have Pixel back as his playmate.

Pixel on the left, Nissan on the right

The keepers will be bringing in the new bear, Tongki, in November when hormones will be at their lowest ebb. It will be interesting to see how the two senior bears get along, Victor and Tongki.

And now we have just heard that four rare Ussuri brown bears from Japan will be coming to the rehabilitation center in the YWP.  It is all part of the YWP's mission to provide homes for animals in need. These new bears will be arriving very soon. 

The Yorkshire Wildlife Park will mark its 10th anniversary next year, and already it has made its mark on the world of animal conservation.

Victor lets Nobby know who is in charge.
Victor, the oldest bear at present.

Saturday, July 21, 2018

Corinna and Anton together again

Corinna
 Today I received word from a friend that beautiful Corinna, with her lovely fluffy big ears, has left us. She was 28 years old.
Corinna
Corinna was born in Copenhagen in 1989, and spent most of her life in the elegant Wilhelma Zoological Park in Stuttgart, Germany with her adored Anton.

Corinna's half brother, with the same father, was the famous Wilhelm, or Willie, born in 1985, who had been sold by the Copenhagen Zoo at the age of 4 months to private owners and spent 16 years sweltering and being forced to perform in a poor Mexican circus. He was rescued in 20o2 along with six other polar bears when the circus overwintered in Puerto Rico, which is a territory of the U.S. Thankfully, Willie lived in comfort the rest of his life, in the North Carolina Zoo, and then the Milwaukee County Zoo, where he died in 2013. 

 Corinna was spared that fate, and was sent to Germany. Anton and Corinna arrived at the Wilhelma together, at the age of one, and grew up as playmates. As they matured, the zoo expected that they would have cubs. They waited and waited. No cubs.

Anton and Corinna
But then Corinna surprised the polar bear world when she gave birth to Wilbär in the fall of 2007 at the ripe old age of 18. The zoo kept his birth a secret, for fear of too much press attention as happened to Knut in Berlin, and was happening at the same time in Nuremburg with Flocke's birth.  Mother Corinna took good care of her only child, but there was an early separation in the spring of 2009, when Corinna and young Wilbär  engaged in some aggressive behavior, sometimes resulting in blood. Maybe it was because Corinna was anxious to get back to her Anton, for they truly were a love match.

Corinna and her beloved Anton

Every afternoon, for most of their lives together, Anton and Corinna would settle in for the famous ear licking ritual, something quite uncommon for polar bears. I have only seen one other pair engage in ear licking, best friends Nancy and Tosca in Berlin Zoo.
Corinna licking Anton's ear
Anton would climb onto the central rock perch in the left hand side, and lay there while Corinna spent long periods of time licking his right ear, while Anton closed his eyes with enjoyment.

Corinna shows her love

The pair seemed to never tire of this rite of affection.

How Anton loved it

They were separated for a period of several years when Corinna had her cub. During this time, Anton really missed Corinna. He pined away for her. The zoo painted the separating glass with whitewash so he couldn't see her, but still he pined, for he could hear her, and smell her.

Love in the afternoon
When young Wilbär left the Wilhelma, he moved to the polar bear Paradise of Orsa Bear Park in Sweden, where he was soon joined by a young girl bear named Ewa, but no cubs have resulted. This past fall, another young girl cub named Hope, the daughter of Flocke and Raspi, has arrived in Orsa so Wilbär now has two girlfriends. 

Swimming with Anton
With Wilbär gone north, Anton and Corinna were reunited, and lived together for many happy years and countless afternoons of ear licking.

Anton and Corinna

Corinna and Anton

Then there was a terrible tragedy in early 2014, when some thoughtless  visitor threw a backpack into the enclosure, Anton ate the contents, and it ended up killing him.

Pretty Corinna
Corinna lived alone in the ensuing years, with several suitors coming to call, but no one could replace Anton, her true love.

From 2014, Yoghi naps while Corinna swims, avoiding him
Yoghi came to the Wilhelma in 2014 when Giovanna, who had given birth to twins the previous fall, needed privacy and space to raise her family, so Yoghi stayed for seven months in Stuttgart, but then returned to his family in nearby Munich. Corinna tolerated Yoghi, but was happy when he left.

From 2015, Corinna on the left, Felix on the right
In 2015, Felix came to visit for 8 months, after Vera had baby Charlotte in Nuremburg. Again, Corinna tolerated him, but was happy when he moved on and she could be alone.

Corinna on the balancing rock

Corinna
After that, the zoo decided Corinna should have her privacy so she has lived alone for the past three years, happily enjoying her solitude.

Corinna and a play stick

I like to think of the beautiful Corinna being reunited with her Anton again, for they were so happy together.

Corinna follows Anton

More ear licking
The cause of death has not been announced.

Corinna on the balancing rock
 
Farewell, beautiful Corinna