Snowflake Makes Public Debut as Super-Cute Poster Cub Reminding World of Need for Urgent Action on Climate Change

Celebrity: Snowflake strikes a pose during her public debut. all photos © picture-alliance/dpa

Nuremburg Zoo's celebrity polar bear cub Snowflake melted hearts at her public debut on Tuesday (April 8). Live television images of the fluffy furball romping happily through her enclosure and taking a dip in her own pool were transmitted around the world.

Four-month-old Flocke, German for Snowflake, already has her own website and is set to take over the role of Germany's most adorable polar bear.

On Tuesday, television teams from all-news channel CNN and Japan's Fuji TV were among some 500 photographers and journalists waiting at the zoo for a first glimpse of the animal.

This summer the zoo expects up to 25,000 visitors a day, who will be allowed to follow her cute playful antics in 15-minute intervals.

Accompanied by her keepers on Tuesday, Snowflake seemed blissfully unaware of the media frenzy surrounding her as she played with her human carers and went for a swim in her enclosure's pool. As she had already been exploring her new outdoor domain for a few weeks prior to her international debut, she was unafraid of the terrain.

Meet the Press: Flocke was cool as a cucumber as she relished her playtime.

At a press conference Tuesday ahead of Snowflake's debut, the zoo's director Dag Encke called for action against global warming which was threatening the natural habitat of the 20,000 to 25,000 endangered wild polar bears.

"The greenhouse effect is literally taking away the polar bears' habitat from under their feet," Encke told reporters as cited by Spiegel Online International. "People shouldn't see Snowflake as a little teddy, but as a symbol."

Encke defended the way the media had elevated the animal to a human level, saying this was useful to encourage public concern about the survival of all animals. People did not care about spiders, but they did care about bears.

"Flocke is not a polar bear anymore, nor a person, but a reflection of human urges," he said. "Polar bears rouse emotions, and via these emotions we can make people conscious (of ecology)."

The cub's name was chosen in a national competition earlier this year. Snowflake was born in Nuremberg Zoo last December and has been hand-reared by a team of four keepers since January when she was taken away from her mother Vera who kept dropping her.

The zoo set up a website documenting Flocke's day-to-day life via photos and videos. Early videos of the squawking tiny pink-skinned and pot-bellied bear covered in white downy fuzz were watched by adoring fans on YouTube and other sites across the globe.

She now weighs in at almost 22 kilos (48 pounds), and some German media reports even claimed she was "chubby". Surely her fans would disagree!

The Flocke story is a sequel to the media sensation over Knut, Berlin Zoo's celebrity polar bear cub who charmed the world last year but has since grown into a moody adolescent. Germans are wondering if the two bears could one day mate as a Traumpaar, or dream couple.

Knut hit the headlines in Germany recently for other reasons - the now full-grown bear hunted and gobbled up 10 large carp fish put in the pool of his enclosure to remove algae. Amid public outcry over this "murderous" act, the Berlin Zoo noted it simply proves that even hand-reared polar bears can make good predators - which is what nature after all intended them to be. (TWIG/dpa)

Links:

Nuremberg Zoo - in German, with pictures and videos of Flocke

Knut's Cute Couins: Flocke Takes a Bath (TWIG, March 14, 2008)

Bears on Film: Cute Knut Hits the Big Screen (TWIG, March 7, 2008)

Flocke Videos on You Tube

A Star is Born: Flocke's Big Day (ABC News, with videos)

Polar Bear Cub Makes Public Debut (CNN video)

Spiegel Online: Snowflake Melts Hearts at Public Debut (with photo gallery)

Spiegel Online: Knut Caught Munching 10 Live Fish (with photo gallery)