Dec. 18 (UPI) -- A team of Canadian researchers have documented a rare case of a female polar bear adopting an unrelated cub who was apparently orphaned.
The nonprofit group Polar Bears International said researchers placed a tracking collar on a female polar bear with a single cub in the spring, and she was spotted again in the fall -- this time with two cubs of approximately the same age.
The mother bear, identified as X33991, is part of the Western Hudson Bay polar bear sub-population. Researchers said that in over 4,600 bears from the sub-population that have been studied over the course of the last half century, this is only the 13th documented case of a mother adopting an orphaned cub.
"Polar bear adoptions are very rare and unusual and we don't know why they happen," Alysa McCall, director of conservation outreach and a staff scientist for Polar Bears International, said in a video released by the organization.
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