New Zealand Celsias

Siku is  a polar bear cub born in captivity in Denmark and has become a major hit .

Born at the Scandinavian Wildlife Park November 22, 2011 his mother had not produced milk for three years. The cub was constantly screaming so, as the zoo's website tells us,  "Instead of leaving the cub to die we decided to try to bottle feed it," according to the website for the Park  . Siku is comfortable around humans and is feeding from a bottle. The site informs visitors Siku weighs just over seven pounds as of December 22, and is "thriving"

The cubs name is SIKU — it means “Sea ice” in Greenlandic language. The name is symbolic, because the polar bears are 100% dependant on sea ice for their survival.

Polar bears catch all their prey from the sea ice, so no sea ice - no polar bears. Due to global warming the sea ice in the Arctic Sea is rapidly diminishing, and the latest forecasts predict that the polar bear may be almost extinct in the wild 40 years from now.

  Scandinavian Wildlife Park is now developing a new information program about the climate changes, the sea ice in the Arctic Sea and the polar bears. This program will evolve around SIKU, who will become Ambassador for his wild cousins living in the Arctic.The polar bears in Scandinavian Wildlife Park are part of a Global breeding program for captive polar bears. The aim of the program is to sustain a population of healthy polar bears in captivity, NOT to breed polar bears to be released in the wild.

This program is short on breeding animals, and it is therefore seeing SIKU as part of that  breeding program.

And here is Siku - in Danish - at 32 days old .

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