“What’s up with Siku?” - Updates by Janne / Polar Bears International

Siku is doing really well. He has become much better at diving, and now hides some of his favorite toys on the bottom of his little pond. He has an antler from a red deer down there that he just loves to dive after. We have also started throwing some of his food in the water. People love watching him jump out in the water with a big splash and then dive down and get the meat.

We’ve started a new thing in his training: teaching him paw presentation. That is a part of what he needs to learn, so that we can check him out and handle him safely as an adult. In teaching him this we discovered that he really knows what clicker training is all about. In clicker training you teach the animal that a click means that a treat is coming, and then you use the clicker to pinpoint the exact thing that the animal did to deserve that treat. We knew that he understood the clicker, because he looks real excited when he hears it, but now it also seems that he understands that he can make us click by doing something! And he has started trying different things to find out what will make us click and give him the treat. You can just see the wheels in his head turning, trying to figure out what we want him to do.

Some of you have noticed that he has a favorite stone. And yes, it’s a regular stone. Siku has always liked sucking on things, especially if it has a smooth surface. When he does, he uses that humming noise that you may have heard him doing when he was younger, and you can also see him kneading with his front paws. It looks and sounds really cute, and it’s just something he does because he likes it. Why he has a fallen in love with that particular stone, we don’t know, but he is having a nice time, and that is the most important thing.

You may also have noticed that he looks black on his shoulders and on the back of his head. It’s actually just some entangled and constantly wet fur, and that apparently makes the fur look darker.

“What’s up with Siku?” - Updates by Janne / Polar Bears International

Siku is now 8 months and 18 days, and he weighs 68 kg.

Siku is still doing really well, and his daily life hasn’t changed much since the last update. But here is something I experienced with him the other day that you might enjoy.

As you might know, we still sleep in a caravan next to the enclosure he is in when the park is closed, and the other night, a little while after I had fed him his last meal of the day, I heard some strange noises. I could hear him breathing heavily and I could also hear the fence rattling. It was completely dark outside so I took a flashlight and went out to see what was going on. What happened was that Siku had pushed one of his big branches all the way up the fence, and was then having a blast pushing, pulling, and jumping on the branch and making a racket. He looked at me like I was disturbing his very fun game, so I left him to it and went to bed. But Siku was not done playing. He played with the branch for a good ten minutes, and just when I thought that the noise was over and I could get to sleep, the splashing started. He was having himself a midnight swim, and not a silent one. I laid there listening to the splashing and started to doze off, when suddenly a loud banging noise started. Siku had moved inside and was jumping up and down a wood panel, enjoying himself by making as much noise as possible. Soon after that he was out with his branch again, rattling the fence. He was having a blast, and kept me awake for a good hour by alternating between rattling the fence, banging on the wood panel and splashing around in the water. Even though I was kind of tired and wanted to sleep, it’s so nice to know that he can enjoy himself like this. Polar bear cubs really are a lot of fun!

“What’s up with Siku?” - Updates by Janne / Polar Bears International

Siku is now 8 months and weighs 60 kg (132 pounds).

Siku’s current diet: When he gets up in the morning, he gets 500 ml of milk in a bowl, and he gets the same just before we go to bed. During the day he eats 700 grams of cow heart three times, so that amounts to 2.1 kg of cow heart per day! On top of that he gets the occasional apple, and he still gets a little bit of dog food. Even though he eats a lot, and still gains several pounds a week, he is always interested in eating. Polar bears cubs have a very high drive for food, and we don’t give him all that he can eat, because he doesn’t need to be as roly-poly as he could be. But the apples are really good for filling his stomach without putting too much weight on him.

Siku’s energy level is different from day to day. Sometimes he will play most of the day, and other times he will sleep more. One of Siku’s favorite games right now is lying on his back with a piece of wood, balancing it on his paws and biting it. Other days it will be rolling in the grass, pushing around his logs, and on warm days, he just loves swimming around in his little pond, playing with his logs.

Some days he plays a game that he loves, but we don’t love as much. He pushes small pieces of wood, grass, and other objects he can find, into the water pipe where the water is running out. You can sometimes see him trying to put one of his big logs in there! Luckily he doesn’t have a log that fits, but we often have to pull smaller objects out of the pipe, so the water will run out again. Polar bear cubs really are great fun. They are so imaginative and full of games.

“Waiting for Winter” - Guest Post by Dr. Andrew Derocher / Polar Bears International

The first of our collared females near Churchill swam ashore on July 7^th. For perspective, this is a month earlier than the 1980s. Other bears have trickled to land since. On the break-up side of things, it looks like 2012 is fairly similar to other years since 1998.

The downside is that the frequency of the early break-ups is occurring much more often. Because polar bears “remember” good and bad years by either storing or depleting fat stores over several years, a run of bad years can run down a population. This happens because adult females deplete the fat stores needed to either produce cubs when they’re pregnant or to produce milk when they have cubs. Based on the aerial survey conducted last summer, recruitment of new polar bears in the Churchill area is well below normal now.