Arturo the polar bear looks depressed.

In one image, the 29-year-old mammal — who’s been dubbed the “world’s saddest animal” online — is slumped over. In another, he’s lying flat on his belly in what looks like an empty swimming pool, with visible patches of dark, dirty fur.

“It’s like he’s waiting for death,” says Maria Fernanda Arentsen, who was raised in Mendoza, Argentina — where the sad bear is held captive — but now lives in Winnipeg, the city to which upwards of 144,000 people want Arturo to be moved.

Hundreds signed a petition Wednesday asking Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to “allow Arturo to have a better life in the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Canada.”

Arturo’s enclosure, where he is the only polar bear, is too small and Mendoza is too warm, the petition argues. Arentsen, who visited the Mendoza Zoo as a child but never met Arturo, knows the climate well.

“I know how hot it can be this time of year and how dry it is,” she says. “Looking at him lying like that, it’s so painful.”

A video posted last year shows Arturo moving back and forth repeatedly in his enclosure, swaying his head side to side and baring his teeth.

It’s an example of severe stereotypical behaviour, said Ian Stirling, one of the world’s best-known polar bear experts, meaning a repetitive activity performed as a coping method.

Based on the video, Stirling said Arturo appears to have “little enrichment or diversification of activities.”

Gustavo Pronotto, director of the Mendoza Zoo, did not return the Star’s calls Wednesday. A person who answered the zoo’s general line declined to comment, saying Pronotto is the only one authorized to speak about Arturo.

The petition may be a moot point — at least where the Winnipeg zoo’s International Polar Bear Conservation Centre is concerned.

Arentsen first reached out to Assiniboine Park Zoo more than a year ago for help and officials there agreed, offering to take Arturo.

But after ongoing dialogue with the Mendoza Zoo over a period of months, a transfer fell through. In part, says the Winnipeg zoo’s spokesperson Laura Cabak, it seemed unlikely they would be able to secure an import permit due to a lack of specific medical records for the massive bear. Then, in February, the government of Mendoza vetoed the move, saying Arturo wasn’t healthy enough.

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Plans were made to send a Winnipeg team to Argentina in late March to assess Arturo’s condition and living arrangements and offer improvements, but Cabak says the trip was cancelled last minute at the Mendoza Zoo’s request.

Outrage has been building in recent months, garnering the attention of celebrities such as actress Olivia Munn.

A “tweetstorm” call to action is planned for Thursday afternoon.

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