BEAR NECESSITY
SHE weighed roughly the size of a squirrel.
Her eyes and ears were fused shut. Her only sense of the world around her came from smell, and her nose led her in one direction: towards the gravity and heat of her mother, a 272kg polar bear named Aurora.
Their den was made of cinder block, painted white and illuminated by a single red bulb in the ceiling. The floor was piled high with straw. The air, heavy with captive musk and kept artificially cool to mimic the Arctic, was pierced periodically by the cries of Nora, a pink-and-white wriggling ball of polar bear, tucked into the folds of her mother’s fur.
Around 9am on Nora’s sixth day, Aurora rose, stretched and ambled out of the den. The cub was completely reliant on her mother, alone and vulnerable without her. As the chilly air crept in, Nora cast her head from side to side, screeching as she searched for something familiar. When she found no answer, she began to wail.
Outside, three women monitored what was happening. Zoo veterinarian Priya Bapodra peered at a grainy, red video – a live feed from inside the den. For five days, the women worked in rotating shifts, keeping a 24-hour watch on Nora.
She’d been born a twin on 6 November 2015, but the other cub had died the following day. Nora was the first polar bear cub to live more than a few days at
