Star cub gets website, but no name

GERMANY’S latest celebrity polar bear cub still did not have a name yesterday, but it got its own website.

The city of Nuremberg, in co-operation with its zoo, launched the site luring viewers with a gallery of photos of the four-week-old cub.

Visitors also were inundating the site’s operators with suggestions for names.

“We’re getting 15 emails with name suggestions every minute,” a city spokesman said. “This afternoon we received over 1,000 suggestions.”

He did not give examples. But for now, the zoo’s keepers have dubbed the cub, thought to be female, Flocke — German for flake, as in snow flake — because of its brilliantly white fur.

Flocke was taken from its mother, Vera, on Tuesday amid concerns she could harm or even kill the newborn, and will not be returned to her. The decision was made after keepers saw Vera carrying the cub around in her jaws and tossing it around her enclosure.

Little more than a year ago another famous polar bear club in Germany, Knut, was hand-reared by his keepers and became a celebrity after being rescued when his mother rejected him.

He delighted thousands of visitors to Berlin’s zoo who followed his growth from a roly-poly cub to a full-grown adult.

Flocke’s popularity is beginning to look like Knut’s, and the Nuremberg zoo now provides daily news conferences to give updates on its condition.

The website is at www.eisbaer.nuernberg.de