Animals of The Alaska Zoo: Ahpun & Lyutyik

A comment was posted on my blog some time ago requesting more information on the animals of the zoo: so I am planning on doing a series of posts – in no particular order and with no particular deadline – on just that.

Refer to archived posting dated January 19, 2009 titled A Birthday Party.

Actually they specifically asked about the polar bears – but I prefer to take it as a request for information on all the animals. The first one I am doing will be on the polar bears, though, so that will hopefully make them happy.

So – to commence the series – let us talk about the two polar bears in residence at The Alaska Zoo.

Ahpun is our female polar bear. She came to us as an orphaned cub about 11 years ago from a place called Point Lay, Alaska. Her mother had been shot in self defense when a native seal hunter got too close to the den without realizing it. It’s sad that it happened, but at least he did the next best thing and called the Fish & Game to come rescue the cub. She would not have survived on her own.

At the same time she arrived at the zoo we got an orphaned brown bear cub as well. Since bear cubs tend to fare better with company, and they were both of the same approximate age, it was decided to place the two cubs together and see what happens. As far as we knew, we were the only zoo to ever put a brown bear cub together with a polar bear cub – so we had no idea what would happen.

Happily for us, and for the cubs as well, it was a perfect match. The two girls became close friends and lived together until they matured into full-grown adults. At that time the brown bear moved in with our male Kodiak bear and Ahpun got the brand spanking new enclosure – complete with a swimming pool and two waterfalls – all to herself.

Since the fate of polar bears world-wide is under considerable stress currently and it is thought that they may not survive the next 50 years, the available gene pool for captive polar bears is a very precious thing. Since Ahpun was born in the wild and will introduce a whole new strain of genes, our young lady drew international attention once she hit child-bearing age. We started looking in to finding her a mate!

The male that was finally chosen for her came to us from Australia, of all places. Obviously he wasn’t a native; he was born in Russia and had moved with his sister to Sea World Australia when they were one year old.

His journey to the Alaska Zoo was facilitated by Fed-Ex, the only company with a plane big enough to transport a full grown male polar bear. He was a great traveler, sitting in his custom-made crate for over 35 hours while they hauled him from one side of the planet to the other.

Unfortunately, he wiggled around a bit while in his crate and wore off all the hair from his bottom. I’m sure you know that a polar bear’s skin is black, which presumably helps them retain heat out in the frigid north. Couple that with the fact that in his previous home they had given him bark chips to roll in which turned his hair a bright orange color, and you can imagine what he looked like. Eventually all his hair grew back – and in the proper color - so that he is now even more beautiful than we’d hoped for.

Lyutyik – which in Russian means something like “Beautiful Flower” or “Fragrant Flower” – was five years old when he moved to Alaska. Ahpun was seven, so she had the advantage of age & maturity. Lyutyik had the advantage of size, however, weighing in at 1,069 pounds – completely dwarfing Ahpun’s more girlish figure at nearly 700 pounds.

The beginning of their courtship was a little rough. Ahpun immediately gathered up all of her toys and jealously guarded them against his futile attempts to steal them. After a month or so, when she realized that he wasn’t going to go away, she grudgingly let him have a beat-up old bucket that she wasn’t interested in any more.

They’ve since worked out all the kinks and are now cozily cohabitating. They are also practicing their mating habits quite diligently (this makes giving tours to the little kids very interesting at times) so, until we have things ready for cubs, Ahpun is on the pill.