News about Brno's polar bears - PHOTOS!

Hello, everybody

I am happy to inform you, that Cora, female polar bear from ZOO Brno, is probably (90%) pregnant again! she has already gave birth to three pairs of twins – but only the last one, which was born in November 2007 survived. Two boys, named Tom and Bill, became super stars of ZOO Brno and many visitors came just to see them father of all the cubs is named Umca. He is young, amazing, very charismatic, clever and lazy male, who is one of the ,,animal celebrities" of Czech ZOOs, because everybody was watching his tour from ZOO Brno to ZOO Prague, from ZOO Prague to ZOO Gelsenkirchen and then back to Brno.

Umca had to travel away, because he could not stay in ZOO Brno with Cora and babies, as male polar bears are known to be able to kill their own cubs. ZOO Brno has no enclosure, where he can stay, so...
As Cora will probably give birth this month, Umca had to be moved!
And it happened today.
Umca was firstly supposed to go to Gelsenkirchen again, where there are amazing natural enclosures, but one of local females is pregnant, so Umca had to go to other ZOO. He was transported to ZOO Bratislava today. This ZOO is very close to Brno, but its exhibits for bears are poor...

I could not watch transport of Umca in the ZOO, because I was studying for my UNI test. But all newspapers were reporting about it and also all TV news covered this event, as Umca is real star
He is also very clever – he did not want to travel again, so keepers had lot of work before they managed to close him to transport box he knows many tricks


Here you can see some press photos and videos of Umca's transport (articles are in Czech, but you can see interesting shots and videos):

Video
Photos and video
Photos


Honestly... I am afraid, that this time babies will not survive, as only 8% of bears born in ZOOs survive. It seems as horrible number, but it is natural, I think. But I am nervous – every Czech will now await birth of cute cubs.... and every problem or death of baby bear will be a terrible problem for ZOO, its image and PR
Well, I have some photos of polar bears from our ZOO

This journal is for my dear Kajula
















And some photos from the past.












I wish you luck, Umca and Cora!