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When my friend, David Booth, saw the pictures from yesterday’s blog about swimming with polar bears, he created a cartoon for the Polar Bear Habitat & Heritage Village. It’s below and it’s pretty cool in my humble opinion.

You might remember that David and I created a polar bear cartoon blog. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, go to Cartoons.PolarBearNews and check out David’s unique take on polar bears.

Bear hugs, Frankie

P.S. To get this blog emailed to you, simply type in your email address and press ’subscribe’ in the box on the right side of this blog.

P.P.S. For more polar bear facts, photos, cartoons and more, check out my Squidoo site: Are You Polar Bear Aware? which has received several awards this year.

P.P.P.S. If you want to know what you can do to protect polar bears and other endangered species, contact The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) at http://www.nwf.org/polarbear

Yes, if you want to, you can swim with polar bears. In a little town in northern Ontario, Canada, The Polar Bear Conservation and Education Habitat & Heritage Village has an outdoor pool where you can join polar bears for a swim.

It’s not as dangerous as it sounds. There is a glass wall between swimmers and the polar bears. It is bulletproof, shatterproof glass that is almost 9 centimeters thick. It took almost 20 years to get the habitat up and running, so they think they’ve covered all the bases. When they first opened, they had over 11,000 visitors in the first 6 months.

The group says they are “a non-profit facility committed to conservation, education, research and recreation of the human and natural heritage of the lower James Bay ecosystem and the Great North Clay Belt.” For more information on the organization and/or to find out how you can swim with polar bears, click Polar Bear Habitat & Heritage Village.

How cool is that?!

Bear hugs, Frankie

P.P.S. For more polar bear facts, photos, cartoons and more, check out my Squidoo site: Are You Polar Bear Aware? which has received several awards this year.

Olaf, the father of Klondike and Snow, the 1st polar bear cubs raised by hand, died on May 3 at the Denver Zoo. Olaf was 22 years old and had been at the Denver Zoo since he 1987 at the age of 1-1/2 years old.

Zoo keepers had noticed over the past several weeks that Olaf was lethargic and his feeding was off. On May 2, the veterinary staff anesthetized him and performed a medical exam. They found a swollen area in his abdomen and so they performed a biopsy. The results of the biopsy showed an aggressive and terminal form of liver cancer.

Olaf was humanely euthanized on May 3 due to the loss of quality of life and because of the cancer was deemed irreversible. The necropsy determined Olaf had a massive tumor in his abdomen.

Olaf in better days

Picture courtesy of Denver Zoo.

Senior Veterinarian Dr. David Kenny who was Olaf’s veterinarian for 21 years, said, “Often with wild animals, they do not show symptoms of illness until they are quite ill. This was the case with our valiant Olaf, who showed no signs of illness until quite recently, despite having terminal liver cancer. He was such a good bear.”

Olaf was a very popular and will be sorely missed.

Bear hugs, Frankie

P.S. To get this blog emailed to you, simply type in your email address and press ’subscribe’ in the box on the right side of this blog.

P.P.S. For more polar bear facts, photos, cartoons and more, check out my Squidoo site: Are You Polar Bear Aware? which has received several awards this year.

P.P.P.S. If you want to know what you can do to protect polar bears and other endangered species, contact The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) at http://www.nwf.org/polarbear

I had to share this animation with you. The polar bears are great and the attention to detail is unbelievable. You’ll know what I mean if you look at the reason the one bear is bopping his head up and down (hint — look at the picture on the screen he’s holding.)

For more great cartoons, pictures and animations of polar bears, click More Polar Bears

Bear hugs, Frankie

P.S. For more great pictures, facts, videos, click Are You Polar Bear Aware.

P.P.S. For polar bear cartoons and more click this picture.

P.P.P.S. If you want to know what you can do to protect polar bears and other endangered species, contact The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) at National Wildlife Federation (NWF)