Mother Polar Bear Rushes To Her Baby Drowning In Tank

Motherly devotion is not at all exclusive to human beings, as a video of a polar bear and her babycirculating on Facebook clearly shows.

A baby polar bear is clumsily rolling around and playing on the edge of a fake shore, beside a fake pond in his zoo enclosure, when he suddenly slips.

The heart-stopping moment occurs just as his mother's back is turned, and she's out of the frame.

But the cub's mother quickly notices the danger, and rushes to the rescue.

But she doesn't just push her cub up onto the shore - she spots her baby while he learns how to pull himself up.

"Wow! That momma didn't just rescue," one commenter on Facebook pointed out. "She took the opportunity to teach. Nature is amazing!"

As the baby polar bear learned to pull himself up out of danger, other viewers of the video considered the condition of the polar bear family's life in general. "How about rescue them out of the zoo," a commenter succinctly wrote.

Someone else had an even larger perspective: "It totally sucks that they're trapped in a man-made habitat....and yet ironically they are dying and losing their own habitat due to global warming by the very same species that's 'saving them from extinction'.... it just sucks all around...."

Sadly, this commenter is right. Polar bears are in danger. Because of man-made changes in the earth's climate, each year the ice these beautiful animals to live on is diminishing.

Learn how you can help polar bears here.

Have a tip? Email sarahv@thedodo.com.