Not even passionate pleas from US performer Cher to Argentina’s president could produce what is arguably a much-needed life-change for Arturo, who campaigners have called the world’s saddest polar bear.
He’d be just another mammal in captivity were it not for a string of online denouncements seeking to transfer Arturo to a climate more in line with his natural Arctic habitat. Then Cher sent a few tweets to President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and before long, Arturo became known on social media as the world’s saddest zoo animal. rturo is 29 years old and has spent the last 21 years of his life at the municipal zoo in Mendoza, Argentina, where temperatures in the summer months often exceed 100 degrees. After his pen partner died in 2012, and another polar bear died in Buenos Aires later that year, Arturo is now the only polar bear alive in Argentina — which just makes his whole situation that much sadder.
But on Wednesday, the director of the Mendoza zoo confirmed to VICE News that Arturo will not be moving to cooler pastures in Canada — as activists had hoped — or anywhere else.
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