Knut , who charmed visitors to the Berlin Zoo as an orphaned cub in 2007, died in his enclosure today in front of a crowd of 600-700 people. Knut was only four years old, as opposed to the typical polar bear lifespan of 15-18 years. Tragedy seems to have followed Knut for his entire brief life: his twin died at only four days old, and the zookeeper who hand-raised him died in 2008. As Knut grew, he stopped being the cute cuddly cub everybody loved; like many zoo animals, his behavior became problematic, and people avoided visiting him. A post-mortem is scheduled for Monday.
posted by briank on Mar 19, 2011 - 79 comments

"Snowball Cam has no visible moving parts but [is] able to roll across most terrains, even up hill." A new generation of spycams - very mobile spycams - have been prowling the northern arctic islands of Norway for an upcoming BBC TV program on polar bears. Bilzzard Cam has two electric motors that propel it across the snow - on skis - at speeds up to 40 mph. When threatened by the bears, it releases the onboard decoy device - the Snowball Cam - seen in action here.
posted by woodblock100 on Dec 23, 2010 - 34 comments

After twelve years of not getting laid, Yan Yan the Chinese panda finally kicked the bucket late Monday at the Berlin Zoo. Officials admits she died alone and nobody immediately noticed. Now the media is running with the story that the popularity of Knut the polar bear cub may be the reason behind the death of his neighbor. In other news, the European Union celebrated its 50th birthday in Berlin. Nobody noticed.
posted by phaedon on Mar 27, 2007 - 31 comments

Nanoq
A survey of British taxidermic polar bears 2001-04.
posted by johnny novak on Feb 1, 2007 - 9 comments

Meet the grolar bear (via)
posted by reklaw on May 11, 2006 - 39 comments

Researchers from the WWF have tracked a tagged polar bear swimming at least 74 km in just one day, and "maybe up to 100 km, providing the first conclusive proof the bears can cover such giant distances in the water." And now you too can track the location of the tagged long-distance-swimming bear, named Skadi, by checking out her WWF Polar Bear Tracker. If Skadi is boring you, however, why not check out the tracker for the WWF's other tagged bear, Borealis?
posted by Effigy2000 on Aug 12, 2005 - 11 comments

"When a male polar bear and a human are face to face, there occurs a brief kind of magic: an intense, visceral connection between man and beast whose poignancy and import cannot be expressed in mere words. Then he rips your arms off."
It's rare for someone to pull off morbid and hilarious at the same time. Here's an example.
posted by Su on May 16, 2002 - 22 comments