Last week the zookeepers of Nuremberg City Zoo announced that they needed to take the cub away from it’s mother. They feared that she would eat it, since the zoo’s other female polar bear had recently eaten two of her own cubs.

This week they decided to name the cub by holding a public poll. The poll ended and the winner was “Flocke,” meaning flake, like snowflake, in German.

Flocke is a five week old polar bear cub was taken away after the zookeepers saw the mother being carrying Flocke in her mouth and tossing it around.

Where were the mischief-makers this time? It’s no Mister Splashy Pants, but Flocke will have to do.

Original article

Since the mauling of the three on Christmas day the San Fransisco has been trying to upgrade all of their enclosures.

That to me sounds good, but not having control over the animals in the enclosure, especially the dangerous ones, sounds a little scary. Wouldn’t it make more sense to shut down the zoo for the repairs, or completely block off certain parts? Safety of their customers should be the highest priority. Either way, the having a snow leopard almost escape its little cage and a polar bear having to be darted doesn’t sound safe to me.

A nearly 100-pound snow leopard managed to rip a 4-inch hole in its wire mesh cage Thursday afternoon and got part of its head and paw out, zoo officials said. The zookeeper could have been harmed if she had not secured the cage, but visitors were never threatened because the cage was in a larger, secured enclosure, zoo spokesman Sam Singer said.

Go read a bit more here.

In case some of you missed the tiger incident: Tatiana, Siberian Tiger escapes and mauls 3, killing one