My Polar Bear Friends and Friends of Polar Bears: Dierenrijk

Showing posts with label Dierenrijk. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

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.

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Loaves and Fishies for Frimas' twins

Big loaves of bread make great floating toys in their pool,
and then you can eat the bread.

One of the girls with a delicious fish

Nivi and Elva are adorable and active little polar bear cubs, and they want to play. Here they are, six months old. Their Dutch zoo does not believe in giving them buckets and balls and barrels and traffic cones with which to play, so they have their fun with their food.

Frimas is a great mom. This is her third set of twins

Their mother Frimas, now raising her third set of twins in Dierenrijk in Nuenen, the Netherlands, was born in the Canadian wilds in 2002, and rescued as an orphaned cub. She lived in zoos in Quebec and Calgary in those early months, then Zoo Sauvage in St. Felicien for seven years. Frimas flew across the ocean in 2011 and came to Nuenen, where she met Henk. A year later she gave birth to Pixel and Noordje in November of 2012. Pixel is now at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Great Britain, where he lives with his grandfather Victor and two other young male bears. Noordje is in Emmen in the Netherlands with three other young female bears.

Frimas with Nicky and Simona in 2016

Three years later, Frimas gave birth to Nicky and Simona, first thought to be twin boys, and even named after a famous Dutch singing duo, but later deemed to be girls. These sisters now live together in Hermival-les0Vaux zoo in Normandy, France.

Now she is raising Nivi and Elva, who are definitely tested and chipped as girls.

Frimas with Nivi and Elva

Henk, the father of all three sets of twins, was born in November of 2005 in Ouwehands Zoo in Rhenen, the Netherlands, not far from Nuenen. He was one of a rare set of triplets, born to Huggies and Victor. His sister Ewa lives in Sweden now, and his brother Jelle lives in St. Felicien, Canada, and has just fathered two cubs himself with two different mothers. Cousins!

Father Henk. He has a nice big enclosure next door, with a big pond.

Mother polar bears have great patience

The announcement of names

Nivi and Elva are so similar,
they cannot be told apart except by the chip reader

Nivi and Elva spend their time nursing, napping and playing

Unlike most zoos, Dierenrijk does not allow toys because they see plastic objects as unnatural. The girls have themselves to play with, plus sticks and swimming. Thus when food is presented, it is seen as a toy as well, for cubs love to play with it, for they need to play.

Still napping, almost ready to play

Time to wake up

Here we go, chasing around the meadow

In most zoos, mother polar bears use toys as tools to teach their children about being a predator, about hunting. Toys and interesting objects are provided as enrichment for the bears, who are intelligent and very curious. By playing with toys in the water, the cub learns stealth, to sneak up on prey, to attack, to destroy, and problem solving. They love puzzles. It may look like they are having fun, but play is serious work for a polar bear cub. They practice their ice floe pouncing. They pretend to attack their sibling or their mom, and in most zoos, toys.

Ready to pounce

In the wild, polar bear mothers can teach their cubs about hunting prey by actual hunting, by showing them and letting them experiment.

Playtime

In Nuenen, without toys, the cubs play with each other or with their mom. They wrestle, they throw around sticks and clumps of grass.

Playing with clumps of grass

And they play with their food.

Lunch has arrived. Fish, vegetables and lots of bread loaves

The view from the main window, over the pond.

You can see the polar bear family through the main window, which oversees the pond and meadow. The other view window is across the way, as you can see in the photo, but because of construction of the new Rhino habitat to the right, the normal path to the right is closed off, and it is a long detour to the left to get from one polar bear viewing window to the other.

One of the many Snowy Owls

The third viewing window is currently inaccessible because of Rhino construction. It is still nice to walk down to where the path ends, though, because when you walk through the magical owl tunnel, where you are surrounded by a lush habitat occupied by over a dozen owls, mostly snowy owls.