Adorable polar bear makes her debut at zoo
Polar bear cub Nanook and her mother were captured exploring their enclosure for the first time at the Zoom Erlebniswelt zoo in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, on Friday.
In the photos, the mama bear can be seen with her cub, who was born on Dec. 4.
Lara herself was also a December baby, born on Dec. 1, 2004, in Vienna. She later moved to her current home in 2005, according to the zoo.
The polar bear is listed as "vulnerable" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of threatened species, due to a significant loss of Arctic Sea ice from climate change. The IUCN estimates there are 22,000 to 31,000 polar bears worldwide. There are 19 distinct subpopulations of polar bears that live throughout the ice-covered waters of the circumpolar Arctic, though a majority live in Canada.
A study published in the December 2016 issue of the scientific journal Biology Letters predicts that global polar bear populations could decline by almost a third by 2050.
