30 junio 2006

There’s a place in the world where children can swim among polar bears.





Since July 2004, in the little town of Cochrane, northern Ontario (Canada), you can visit the Polar Bear Habitat , a kind of local zoo where people can live the once-in-a-lifetime experience of an outdoor swim with polar bears. Of course, the humans are in a different pool, separated from the bears habitat by just a layer of glass. Can you see the water drops now? There's a bulletproof, shatterproof glass that's almost 9 centimetres thick, because although they're cute, polar bears are among the world's most ferocious carnivores. It took 20 years for the Polar Bear Conservation and Education Habitat and Heritage Village to get off the ground. When it opened in it attracted some 11,000 visitors in the first six months. And now you’re invited to go and swim with all those bears if you dare. I don’t.

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More info: 1, 2, 3 y 4

See also: Bears and submarines