The polar bear sponsored by explore.org just received a new name, chosen by an overwhelming majority! X35591 will now be known as Aurora, a beautiful name for a beautiful animal!
Aurora has had an interesting fall so far. She hasn’t followed the pattern of many other collared bears in the area, opting to follow her own path on her own time with her two young cubs.
Aurora got a late start this year. While many other females started heading to the coast in mid-October, our bear was fairly stationary during this month. She may have been waiting until many of the males left before taking her cubs to the coast; it’s hard to say. Instead, Aurora didn’t start moving up the coast until around mid-November, but made pretty good time once she started traveling. She got onto the ice by November 24th, not bad at all!
Aurora has since moved quite a ways south in Hudson Bay, heading near the ice that is off the coast of Ontario. She and her cubs have clocked 189 miles in just a few weeks and are the most southern of our collared bears so far. She is in the same general region as a few other polar bears though, indicating there may be a food source nearby.
We will keep blogging about where Aurora and her cubs go next, and, in the meantime, be sure to check out PBI’s Bear Tracker for updates!
