Polar pals: How two Alaska Zoo bears became friends

It looks to visitors like the two polar bears are longtime best pals. They swim and play together. They sometimes rest alongside one another. They bound toward each other in bursts and play-fight, their jaws gaping at, but not sinking into, each other’s napes.

Cranbeary and Kova are an awfully cute pair at the Alaska Zoo.

Their new friendship began with one tense playdate. The two were introduced with free contact for the first time just a month ago. Two dozen staff members and others nervously watched from the side of their fenced yard at the zoo in South Anchorage, hoping the bears would not only accept but enjoy each other’s company.

“Mission accomplished on that regard,” Sam Lavin, zoo curator, said this week.

A lot of planning is behind the behavior that visitors might get to glimpse. The two animals have very different backgrounds, which gave zookeepers reasons to proceed cautiously. One is from the wild, the other born in captivity. One is years beyond mature, the other is not yet fully grown.

Cranbeary, named because she was born on Thanksgiving Day, is 22 years old. That’s not ancient in polar bear years, but it’s advanced. Polar bears might reach 25 in the wild and 30 in captivity. Cranbeary came to Anchorage from the Denver Zoo in 2018 as part of the Species Survival Plan, a program of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to manage breeding and transfers of endangered species.

At the Alaska Zoo, Cranberry was introduced to Lyutyik, a male polar bear, as a possible breeding partner. Lavin said breeding behavior was observed, but it never resulted in a cub. Lyutyik died in 2019 at age 19. Cranbeary lived alone in the years that followed.

In late 2022, an orphaned polar bear cub was rescued from Alaska’s North Slope after “getting into trouble” around the buildings of Prudhoe Bay. Polar bear cubs normally stay with their mothers and learn to hunt seals for two years, Lavin said, but Kova, as she was later dubbed, was in distress. Fish and Wildlife officials trapped and transported the 104-pound cub to the Alaska Zoo.

“She was just going to starve to death on her own,” Lavin said.

In Anchorage, Lavin, 43, oversees a staff of 11 zookeepers and five interns for a collection of about 100 animals, many of which come to the zoo after being orphaned or injured. Lavin took her own unique path there. Raised in Anchorage, she had once pursued an accounting career in Montana.

“I was a corporate tax auditor, and I was miserable,” she said.

After volunteering in wildlife rehabilitation in Montana, she returned to Anchorage in 2015. She has worked at the zoo for eight years.

Zoo staff helped Kova plump up on a diet of meat, fish, lard and a high-fat dog-food-like meal. But even as the bear’s health improved, other benchmarks would need to be reached before she could share an enclosure with a potential new bear bestie.

Before her capture, Kova had been spotted eating an Arctic fox, a species known to sometimes carry rabies, Lavin said. That meant the cub would need a six-month quarantine. Staff who cared for her, including Lavin, needed rabies vaccinations. “We had to really limit who could go see her,” Lavin said.

When the quarantine expired, other discrepancies remained. Kova was still much smaller than Cranbeary and needed more time to grow. “When you introduce bears, the risk is that the more dominant bear is going to corner the other one, and that’s when injuries can occur,” Lavin said.

Lavin said Cranbeary, who has lived in two other zoos, hasn’t always been known as an easy roommate. She hadn’t exactly become fast friends with Lyutyik in Anchorage. “It was more of a tolerant relationship,” she said. “It wasn’t like they liked each other. It was more like they just put up with one another.”

Zoo staff took the introduction between Cranbeary and Kova slow. Kova was first rotated into spaces she hadn’t occupied in the habitat before to make her comfortable. The two bears were sometimes separated only by fencing so they could hear, see and smell each other. In the run-up to the introduction, the two were given hearty diets to reduce the possibility that stress could result from being hungry.

“One thing we’re good at is fat bears,” Lavin said.

Unrestricted contact came on April 26 in a yard out of public view. Lavin said zoo staff kept an arsenal of deterrents close at hand — noisemakers, bear spray, hoses, bean bag guns and a sedation gun — just in case fighting started when the bears were brought together.

“We lose sleep over introductions,” Lavin said. “They’re nerve-wracking.”

No deterrents were needed. When the doors opened between dens and enclosures, the bears came together. They grumbled at each other. Cran chased Kova around briefly, but soon gave up. Within an hour, the two animals were playing like friendly dogs. “They did great,” Lavin said.

In addition to enriching the bears’ lives, the introduction serves a practical purpose: It makes feeding and cleaning the habitat easier on zoo staff. Kova also seems to have inspired her older friend to be more active, Lavin said. The partnership is a win for the zoo and its guests, who come from all over the world each summer, according to executive director Tristan Thon. The polar bear exhibit is a highlight for many.

“I think this is just incredibly important to the zoo,” Thon said.

In the weeks since their introduction, Cranbeary and Kova have been seen swimming together and playing with their toys in the mornings. Because only about a quarter of the zoo’s polar bear habitat is viewable to the public, the bears often spend time together out of sight. This week, the two bears calmly approached Lavin, who fed them both treats of peanut butter crackers and fruit leather, their long tongues extending through openings in a fence.

Later, Kova — now 230 pounds and growing — plopped her hind end down next to Cran’s. The two sniffed each other, gently swatted, then lightly bit at each other’s necks. Cran put her giant paw around Kova’s shoulders to leverage playful dominance. That’s no longer concerning for Lavin, nor apparently for Kova.

“You’ll see Kova kind of like, give to Cran, and make sure Cran knows that she’s the one in charge,” Lavin said.