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Athletic polar bears in Budapest – VIDEO
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Belij and Serij, the two new polar bears in our zoo, arrived on March. We shot a short film on their first steps in their new home, and we introduce them in detail in this article, zoobudapest.com said.
Polar bear-keeping has a very long tradition in the Budapest Zoo. The public of Budapest could occasionally see these animals already at the end of the 19th century, and after 1912 they were kept regularly. The first successfully raised cub was born in 1933, and so our zoo was amongst the first to breed this species successfully. After WW2, between 1950 and 2013, there were polar bears living in Budapest all the time.
Our newcomer polar bears are siblings from the same litter; both are male, and were born in the Moscow Zoo on 28 November 2015. They flew in from there. Being less than a year and a half old, they are considered to be very young animals: although they can hardly be called cubs, they will keep growing for years; they will reach sexual maturity at the age of 5, and breeding maturity at the age of 7 or 8.
Get to know the new polar bears!
In the Russian capital they were given the names Belij (Белый = White) and Serij (Серый = Grey) and we will keep using these names. The names are only partly right, because it is true that polar bears’ coat is yellowish-white, and can take a greyish shade if it becomes dirty while playing, but the status of which of the two is whiter at the moment is not a steady one.
From the behaviour of the new polar bears, it is already clear that brotherly love is very strong between them, and they seem to be rather good-natured animals. They are very playful, which is not at all surprising for such young animals. They were very keen to discover their new home, and they particularly like the huge pool, into which they belly-flop and dive.