The Toronto Zoo’s polar bear cub is just beginning to take its first steps on all four legs.

The cub, born in early November and weighing in at 4.4 kg, is also teething on objects such as his blanket as his molars and incisors grow in, drinking milk six times a day and learning to lap milk from a dish. He is also playing.

Click here for a video of the cub

He can now open his eyes fully and focus on his surroundings, and he has been out of the incubator for a month now, becoming acclimatized to cooler temperatures. His whiskers are just growing in and he’s developing a thicker coat.

The cub, born to mother Aurora, was the only survivor in the litter of three, but has a brother, Hudson, living in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park Zoo. Because of Aurora’s history of rejecting and attacking her litter of three, the wildlife centre has taken up the responsibility of caring for the cub.

Polar bear cubs often don’t survive the first three months after birth, but the wildlife team, which has been “working around the clock” to care for him, says he is responding well.

“We are very happy with his progress so far,” says Dr. Graham Crawshaw, senior veterinarian at the Toronto Zoo. “We hope that he will grow up to become another ambassador for his species, highlighting threats to the arctic environment.”

The World Wildlife Fund classifies the polar bear as a “vulnerable” species and says there are 20,000 to 25,000 worldwide.