- Yes.

So as a zoo that's credited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, our polar -- a lot of our animals are actually part of something called the Species Survival Plan, or an SSP.

So it's essentially a dating service for animals, right?

So we look at all of their genetics and try and find out the best situation that we can set it up for breeding success.

We had Nikita and Anana here for a few years.

We did everything that we could to set them up for success for breeding opportunities.

And unfortunately, this is something that I like to say to everyone, polar bear dating is complicated, even in the wild.

So even if, we tried to set up the stars and have it align, but we were not successful with Anana and Nikita.

So that is why Payton was approved to come here.

And he's gonna be paired with Anana as a breeding pair, and Nikita will go off and be paired with another female.

Polar bears are solitary in the wild, outside of breeding season.

So we're very fortunate that we do have the two different habitats that we can separate them outside of that.

When it does come time for breeding season, we go through a process of introductions, to where they'll start to, you know, they can smell each other, hear each other.

We'll set it up that they can see each other with like a, what we call a buffer stall, in between them.

[chiming music] We look for things like flirting from her.

She'll sit and she'll watch.

And she does, she bat's her eyes.

And she seems more confident.

When we're seeing things out of her that she's confident sitting there, she's not afraid of him, she's okay turning her back, and she doesn't feel like he's going to do anything.

And then we're looking for him, what they'll do is they'll bring presents.

Like he'll bring food over, or toys, or want to sit and lay and watch her.

When they're laying next to each other they'll mouth at each other, sort of like play things.

So that's what we were looking for.

The rest of the year, male polar bears are pretty terrifying, the females are afraid of them, 'cause they're twice the size of a female, and could hurt them.

So we're looking for nice, calm, flirting, dating behavior from polar bears.

So the females actually are only supposed to cycle once, and that's for about a week period.

So breeding season could start as early as February.

Out in the wild, the males are tracking the females.

They can actually, they have a very heightened sense of smell, that's probably their strongest.

And they can smell a female for miles and miles away without seeing her, just by the smell that she's leaving in the snow and ice from her feet.

So the males will actively go out there and look for females that are not attached to a male, or anything like that.

And do what's called a guarding behavior.

So once he finds a girl, he'll court her.

He'll do things like protecting her, and looking for any other males that he can combat and look all big and tough.

And guard and stay with her until that point when she does cycle for that week.

And then they breed for that week, and then they go their separate ways.

And that's it.

It's a completely new pair.

So all of our history so far has been Nik and Anana.

And we know how Nikita acts, and we know how Anana acts, and we're learning Payton.

So it can be a completely different situation.

They could like each other longer, and wanna stay, get together longer than Nik and Anana did.

So we just have to do our best to learn this pair now.

Well, the population worldwide for polar bears is 25,000.

They are, certain populations, are going through a decline.

The ones that we're seeing decline in are the ones that are in seasonal sea ice areas.

So that means that the ice, they rely on the ice in the wild.

They have to get out there to be able to hunt seals.

They use it as a platform to look for mates.

And it's where they need to be.

They are perfectly adapted to live out and hunt on the ice, they need it.

So in those areas where the sea ice is seasonal and it melts away at a certain time of the year, they're landlocked.

And they're going through long periods of fasting at that point.

So, we're trying to breed them so that we can maintain a population within a zoo setting.

And in the future, we don't run out of bears in the wild.

We never wanna see a point that there's ever, that there are no more polar bears, right?

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