Rough play led to Baffin the polar bear’s drowning death, Calgary Zoo officials say

A necropsy has shown that a polar bear at the Calgary zoo died by drowning after his throat was crushed by a fellow bear in rough play considered normal for the massive predators.

“It’s typical of how they play,” said Sandie Black, senior veterinarian for the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo. “We believe this was a tragically misplaced grab.”

The two male bears, Siku, 8, and seven-year-old Baffin, were roughhousing in a pond Friday morning before visitors to the exhibit when Baffin submerged and didn’t resurface.

“They were in and out of the water,” said Black. “They were playing and fine, then one moment he didn’t come up.”

The bite went unobserved. At first, nobody knew anything was wrong.

“It was apparent that one of the bears didn’t surface,” said Colleen Baird, the zoo’s director of animal care. “(Visitors) were like, ‘How long can a bear hold its breath?’”

6:34 Baffin the polar bear dies at the Calgary Zoo

Eventually, Siku was brought back into his enclosure, visitors ushered away and the pond drained to reveal Baffin’s body.

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Examination revealed that although Siku’s bite didn’t pierce Baffin’s skin, it was hard enough and in just the right place to crush his trachea. Zoo staff couldn’t have done anything to prevent the death, Black said.

“The placement of the teeth had to be so exact,” she said.

“This was almost instantaneous. We believe (Baffin) lost consciousness and the drowning was immediate.”

Siku and Baffin were both originally from the Churchill, Man., area. Both had been orphaned when they were less than a year old — a circumstance which bear cubs don’t normally survive.

The pair came to Calgary from the polar bear enclosure at the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg. They were chosen because they had lived together for years and were considered to be compatible.

Black said because of the nature of the death, there will be no changes to the two-acre habitat for polar bears the zoo officially opened in December 2023. But wild animal advocates with Born Free USA said it’s a mistake to keep polar bears in captivity.

Dr. Liz Tyson, director of animal welfare and advocacy with the organization, said a tragic event was almost inevitable.

“Generally speaking, polar bears are solitary, and they have enormous home ranges where they wouldn’t come across another polar bear a lot of the time,” Tyson said.

“So, to put groups of polar bears in extremely relatively small spaces and expect that nothing will go wrong is a problem.”

Black said Siku, the smaller of the two bears, was being closely watched but was eating and behaving normally.

“We don’t have any immediate concerns for him.”

She said there are no immediate plans to find a new companion for Siku.

“We would like, for his welfare, to bring at least one more polar bear into the exhibit,” Black said. “But there’s no pressing need to do so.”

Baird remembered Baffin as a curious fellow, interested by the people and environment around him.

“He really engaged with his habitat,” she said. “He liked to look and see and smell all the visitors and people.”

1:51 Rare polar bear footage shows life in melting Arctic

— with files from Doug Vaessen, Global News

&© 2024 The Canadian Press