Sultana the Polar Bear

 Guest Post by Hayley Jasinski

Sultana the polar bear was the mother of many cubs that were born in the Washington Park Zoo (later renamed the Milwaukee County Zoo). In 1912, likely at four to six months old, Sultana and three other polar bears were captured from Greenland by fisherman. They were transported to Milwaukee and arrived at the Washington Park Zoo on September 16, 1912. All four of the bears were in the same exhibit at the same time; this type of exhibit would be highly unlikely to be seen today. Zero was born in 1919 as Sultana’s first cub, and he was also the first cub in a zoo to reach adulthood. He was sold to the Longfellow Zoological Gardens in Minneapolis, where he lived to be nine years old. Sultana had 13 cubs total, and lived until 1947, when died at age 35. As it pertains to our Twitter reenactment, Sultana is the mother of Zero, the main character of this event. She was a real polar bear with real impacts!