Scientists try to impregnate bear

SEATTLE – Scientists in Seattle have performed the first artificial insemination attempt on the world’s smallest and perhaps most threatened species of bear, the Malayan sun bear.

“Most biologists think the sun bear is the species of bear most likely to go extinct,” said Cheryl Frederick, a bear keeper at the Woodland Park Zoo who coordinates an international effort aimed at saving this Southeast Asian bear from extinction.

Woodland Park officials have been working with researchers at the San Diego Zoo, where a giant panda was artificially inseminated in 1999. Frederick and Barbara Durrant, head of reproductive physiology at the San Diego Zoo, had been preparing for the moment when they could try the panda technique on a sun bear.

That time came over Memorial Day weekend, when 4-year-old Suntil seemed to be coming into estrus at the Seattle zoo.

Durrant prepared the semen samples from a male sun bear in San Diego, Debu, for transport and headed to the airport, where she ran into some security problems. Officials wanted to know what was in her mushroom-shaped container.

She told them: sun bear semen.

“They wanted to see it,” Durrant said, but she explained that the purpose of the container was to keep the sperm frozen during transport and that opening it might compromise this attempt to help the sun bears.

“They were finally convinced nobody would have made up something like this.”

It will be at least six weeks before it’s determined whether Suntil was impregnated.