Polar bear cub gets tin can trapped in its mouth

A shocking picture of a polar bear with a condensed milk tin can wedged on its tongue has emerged from one of the world's most remote islands. Ironically, the bear was scavenging in rubbish left by a group that went to Wrangel Island to clean up debris polluting its pristine environment.

The cub was walking around with its mother for up to two weeks with the tin can attached to its mouth, wildlife rangers believe. They spotted the stricken bear and acted as soon as possible to remove the tin.

Head of the island's nature reserve Alexander Gruzdev said: 'Happily, it all ended well and I hope there will be no similar situations in the future.' 

Environment inspector Ilya Petukhov and his team shot tranquillisers into the cub and its ever-present mother, before they removed the tin can from the young bear's mouth. 

The lid of the can had not been removed fully, and the sharp edges embedded in the bear's tongue as it licked the remains of the condensed milk, they said later.

After a few hours the bear family was observed in good health moving over the snow on the island between the Chukchi and East Siberian seas. 'Work had been underway to clean-up Wrangel island from garbage,' he said. 

Wrangel and a number of other Arctic islands are littered with trash, some of it from Soviet times.

'The workers used a barrel as a trash bin,' he said. 'They gathered everything left from their camp, including empty cans, so later this could be collected and taken away along with other garbage they picked up.

'And the bear cub obviously found this barrel with trash before it was taken away - and also this ill-fated tin. It was unfortunate  - the cub's mouth got stuck in the can, probably with its tongue, trying to lick it inside. It was a yearling, not very big yet.'

The rangers say no lasting damage was done to the bear cub on this occasion.

Wrangel Island has the highest density of polar bear dens in the world, and was one of the last refuges of woolly mammoths before their extinction.