Whatever you may think about the ethics of Sea World existing, you cannot deny the cuteness of their bb polar bear. You cannot.
Look at it.
She’s walking!
Anywho, Sea World just revealed the gender identity of the polar bear cub, and she’s a girl! Hooray! Girls!
Anywho, the next step now that we know that the 10-kilogram white floof is a girl is to give her a name that pays some kind of tribute to her heritage, with her Russian ma, Liya, and her father a probably-affable Canadian.
So they’ve chosen four contenders, probably to avoid calling the cub Cubby McCubface:
- Mishka, which is Inuit for ‘little bear’;
- Nukka, Inuit for ‘little sister’;
- Arina, Russian for ‘peace’;
- and Katya, Russian for ‘pure’.
So yeah, perfectly normal names, like how people name their daughters ‘Little Girl’ but in Spanish, or their sons the Polish word for ‘Virgin’.
The public’s supposed to vote on the names so that they can win a trip to Disneyland Sea World and a chance to meet mama and cubber.
More important than the contest is how the bb, who was born at the end of April, is tracking. Her twin passed away at the start of May (~tears~), so it feels pretty spesh to hear that this little one is starting to run around.
Head scientist at Sea World, Trevor Long said:
“She’s getting ready to leave the den, but that’s led by the mother, not by us.”“We can’t hurry that up, in the wild they stay in the den for 12 to 16 weeks… because they have to deal with a very, very harsh environment, they have to survive.”
He’s also stoked on the role bb will one day play as a breeder of even more tiny polar bears: “We could lose polar bears by 2040, so she will play a very, very vital role.”
And to think bb Whatsherface is just roaming around the maternity den with no idea about the crushing responsibility she will one day face to continue her species.
Still she has this to look forward to:
Source: Gold Coast Bulletin.
Photo: Sea World.
