This year's polar bear cubs -

 

Mother Frimas with Nivi and Elva, from my visit in 2019.

For the 2023-24 season, we have reports of only three cubs born and surviving this year, one in the Netherlands and twins in a remote northern area of Russia. 

Frimas and Wilbär are the parents of little Otis in Dierenrijk, a zoo between Mierlo, Eindhoven and Nuenen in the Netherlands.

Otis was born November 28, and his birth was announced on November 30. He just made his public debut a week ago. Otis is very popular, and already there are many photos of him with him mom, many of the photos showing how much Otis likes to get dirty. 

Baby Otis this week. (Photo by Hans Muskens)

Frimas, was wildborn in Canada in 2002 (estimated), and has been in Nuenen since 2011. She has already raised three sets of twins:  Pixel (m) and Noordje (f) born in 2012, Nicky (f) and Simona (f) born in 2015, and Nivi (m) and Elva (f) born in 2018. Henk, one of Huggies' triplets born in 2005, is the father of all three sets of triplets born to Frimas. He lives in France now.

Mother Frimas an Baby Otis. (Photo by Hans Muskens)

Otis' father Wilbär was born to Anton and Corinna in the Wilhelma Zoo in Stuttgart Germany in 2007, their only child. He moved to Orsa Predator Park in Sweden where he fathered daughter Miki born in 2020 with Ewa, and twin boys Noori and Nannok in 2021 with Hope. Sadly, Miki died of a heart condition at age 3 as she was being moved with her mother from Orsa to the UK. Hope, along with her twin boys, were also moved from Orsa to Peak Wildlife Park in the UK last fall, after Orsa Park closed.

Otis has some interesting great uncles and a great aunt. Antonia, the famous dwarf polar bear of Gelsenkirchen ZOOM, at age 34 is also the oldest polar bear that we know of. Antonia is the half sister of Wilbär's late father Anton. Both Anton and Antonia were born in Zoo Karlsruhe.

Wilbär's uncle Nanok II, who was half brother of Corinna, was also the father of Malik of Aalborg Zoo.

Corinna's older half brother Wilhelm, also called Willie, also born in Copenhagen, was sold to the East German Circus and ended up in a Mexican Circus, where he and five other polar bears were rescued in 2002 in Puerto Rico and taken to US zoos.  Their rescue was worldwide news. Wilhelm enjoyed a good life for ten years at the North Carolina Zoo and later the Milwaukee County Zoo. 

Father Wilbär, next door (Photo by Hans Muskens)

As the Russian twins, born in the Yakutsk Zoo (Orto-Doydu), the children of wildborn mother Kolymana, are quite remote, we haven't had much information on them. The Yakutsk zoo has announced that the twins will be allowed outside at the end of March. It is very near the Arctic Circle, so it is still quite wintry there. The gender of the cubs is not known. Father of the cubs is Lomonosov, son of Uslada. Kolymana and Lomonosov are parents of daughter Chaarchana (2016) and son Almaz (2019).

UPDATE on March 26: The cubs' birthdate has been announced as December 4. They are a boy and a girl, and there will be a naming contest.

“The cubs feel good, they run actively, tumble and play pranks, but they are always close to their mother. They have grown up and can confidently go out of the house in which they were born into the inner room. Kolymana also feels good, she has a lot of worries, every little bear needs an eye and an eye, but she’s doing great, she’s coping,” said Natalya Safonova, head of the scientific and educational department of the zoo.

The Yakutsk Zoo is about 450 miles south of the Arctic Circle, and quite remote, even from the city of Yakutsk.

In 2012, Kolymana was found as a wandering lost cub, all alone in the world, by members of the Bear Patrol in the ice of the East Siberian Sea in Nizhnekolymsky ulus. She was rescued and brought to Orto-Doydu,  the zoo which is just south of Yakutsk.  

Lomonosov, born in 2011, is the same age as Kolymana. He is the son of the late Uslada and Menshikov, who produced 16 offspring at the Moscow Zoo.

The Russian twins' birth was announced on January 29, but we don't know when they were actually born, and so far just an early den video, no photos. 

As the zoos in Russia and Europe are pretty much at capacity, there has been an intentional slowdown on breeding, and this is why there were so few cubs born last year and this year.

In the Fall of 2023, there were several births in Japan, but they did not survive. Also Friida in Tallinn Estonia had triplets, but just as in the previous two years, they did not live, and Friida is now thought to be too old and they will not try again. 

Last year

In 2022, Anouk was born in Hamburg, Germany, to Viktoria and Kap, the only cub in Europe. Twin girls Belka and Strelka were born in Novosibirsk Russia to Gerda and Kai, also in 2022. And in the USA, where there is plenty of room for more cubs, last year Crystal gave birth to twin boys Kallu and Kallik, with Nuka as the father. No cubs were born in the USA this year.

Thank you to my friend Hans Muskens for allowing me to use his photos of Otis and his parents in Dierenrijk.