San Diego Zoo Celebrates Birth Of Andean Bear Cub

SAN DIEGO—The San Diego Zoo has a new adorable member! It recently celebrated the birth of an Andean bear cub, born at the San Diego Zoo in the early morning hours of Jan. 8, 2020 to first-time mother Alba and sire, Turbo.

According to the zoo, mother and cub are being closely monitored by animal care staff via a closed-circuit video camera, allowing Alba to care for her cub without interruption. The mortality rate for Andean bear cubs in their first month is high so the animal care staff is cautiously optimistic for the cubs’ long-term survival. At just seven days old, the cub—whose sex is yet to be determined—appears to be thriving.

“We are overjoyed about the birth of Alba’s first cub,” Chris Hamlin, the zoo's animal care manager said. “Alba is showing all the appropriate behaviors of a good mother, being very attentive to her newborn. We are so impressed with how well she is handling motherhood.”

The birth of the cub will allow San Diego Zoo Global researchers and animal care staff the rare opportunity to learn about mother and cub interaction, and cub development, zoo staff said. Very little is known about Andean bears in their native habitat. They are very shy and tend to avoid humans, making them hard for researchers to study.

“The Andean forests where we work are so rugged and dense that it will be a long time before we can study the maternal behavior of wild bears there,” said Russ Van Horn, scientist, Population Sustainability, San Diego Zoo Global and co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Andean Bear Expert Team. “Alba’s behavior and her cub’s development will suggest how closely, and for how long, wild mothers and cubs may be linked to birth dens, where we think they’re sensitive to disturbance by humans.”

Andean bears were first cared for at the San Diego Zoo in 1938, and since then, nine cubs have been born. This is the first Andean bear cub born at the San Diego Zoo since 1993.