Ohio zoo's polar bear moves to Chicago to find romance
An Ohio zoo's polar bear is off to Chicago to find love.
The Toledo Zoo says its 21-year-old female bear named Nan has been moved to the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago to see if she will breed with the zoo's male bear.
Nan moved into her new home this week where she's separated by a fence from her potential mate named Hudson.
Brookfield Zoo in Chicago is hoping their new female polar bear Nan, pictured right, is a match with the suburban Chicago zoo's male polar bear Hudson, left
A female polar bear cub, born at the Toledo Zoo in November 2006, passes underneath her mother, Nan. It has been 10 years since Nan had a cub and officials are hoping she will have another
The Brookfield Zoo says the bears will spend a little time getting to know each other before moving in together.
The move was arranged by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and its polar bear species survival program.
Keepers at the Toledo Zoo say Nan is genetically important because she was born in the wild and discovered as an orphan cub near Barrow, Alaska.
Nan, a female polar bear shakes off water after a swim in her public debut at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. She has spent the last 16 years at Toledo Zoo in Ohio
The zoo announced the decision to bring the polar bear to the city on Twitter
Hudson, is pictured here in 2013 playing with a block of ice during a swim in his enclosure at Brookfield Zoo
Nan came to Toledo from Tacoma, Washington, in 2001. She was born in the wild and discovered as an orphan cub near Barrow, Alaska.
Determining Nan was too young to survive in the wild on her own, wildlife authorities took her to the Point Defiance zoo in Washington, where she lived for nearly five years.
Since moving to the Toledo Zoo, Nan had resided in the zoo's Arctic Encounter exhibit with male, Marty, female, Crystal, and several cubs. Her only offspring was Nikita, born in 2006.
'It is important to understand that zoo animal collections are not static. For the good of the U.S. zoo population, the Toledo Zoo decided to send our female polar bear, Nan, to the Brookfield Zoo for breeding purposes,' said Terry Webb, director of animal programs at Toledo Zoo.
'Nan will be moving into an exhibit that was built just a few years ago and will be paired with a male.'
Perfect match? It's hoped that Nan, left, will find love with Hudson, right, at the Chicago zoo
'She is a proven breeder,' said Amy Roberts, the zoo's curator of mammals to the Chicago Tribune. 'She is at an age appropriate to still have cubs. We have a youngish male here that has not had the opportunity to produce a cub yet.'
With an estimated 26,000 of them in the wild, polar bears are listed as a vulnerable species, and their status is expected to change dramatically because of melting polar ice.