Photo Gallery Snowflake Keeps Her Name
Nuremberg Zoo's new celebrity resident, a female polar bear cub, was given her official name on Friday by a panel of judges -- Snowflake.
The name isn't particularly original -- her keepers gave it to her provisionally several weeks ago. The panel chose it above the nearly 30,000 suggestions the zoo solicited in recent weeks through an online naming competition.
Nuremberg Mayor Ulrich Maly announced the name at 3 p.m. Friday at a press conference broadcast live on national television.
The bear cub became a celebrity after being taken from her mother, Vera, on Jan. 8. Vera was tossing her carelessly around her enclosure, prompting zoo keepers to decide to raise the cub in human hands.
The decision has been criticized by some bear experts, who say it is unnatural for such an animal to be raised by anyone but its own mother.
When Snowflake was born late last year, Nuremberg Zoo managers stressed that they planned to avoid the "Knut-mania" that gripped the Berlin Zoo last year. But they seem to have had a change of heart, and products like the stuffed Snowflakes pictured here are beginning to show up in Germany.
She is growing quickly, and Mayor Maly said that she will make her first public appearance at the end of March or beginning of April.
