Animals: Mixed Bears

When two polar bears in Milwaukee’s Washington Park Zoo ducked and drowned a small black bear last autumn (TIME, Nov. 7), the Zoo’s Director Edmund Heller was indulgent. He compared the duckers to playful small boys, did not even feel it necessary to abandon his experiment of keeping various kinds of bears and wolves together in large open dens.

One day last week the Milwaukee Zoo guards heard people yelling near the bear den. A big polar bear was wrestling with a little black bear, holding it under water for longer & longer stretches. After a while, with some honey, the guards got the polar bear to stop playing. By that time the little black bear was drowned.