Boki the bear has made a remarkable recovery after having life-saving, pioneering brain surgery.
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00:00His recovery has actually been really surprising, so it's amazing how quickly he just brushed
00:08himself off and carried on as normal.
00:11We were all still keeping an eye on him two weeks later, quite early hours in the morning
00:15and he was fine.
00:16He was curled up in his nice warm bed and he was just sleeping away and he's quite happy.
00:23He's climbing, he's playing, he's breaking stuff, he's doing everything he should be
00:27for his age.
00:29So he's just starting to show signs of pre-torpor behaviour, which is amazing.
00:35So he's been digging up bits of grass and bits of the turf that comes underneath, dragging
00:40it in and filling his bed up with it, which is amazing, so he's making his own bed.
00:44He's been sitting down and just lazily grazing all of the grass off that they normally do
00:48right before torpor, which is another brilliant sign that he's going to get ready to have
00:52a sleep.
00:54So the next steps for Bocci, we've considerably lowered the medication that he's on.
00:59So we've got to obviously keep decreasing that in small increments, right down to the
01:03point where he's weaned off of it.
01:05And then after that, hopefully he just goes into a winter torpor.
01:10It's been six weeks since we undertook this significant surgery on Bocci and I don't think
01:16we can quite believe how well he's done subsequent to that major, major operation.
01:21He's progressed really well.
01:22From day two he was up awake wanting to interact with his keeper team, who of course invested
01:28so much of their care and attention towards Bocci.
01:31But he's going from strength to strength.
01:34His activity levels are back to normal.
01:37He's put on a tremendous amount of weight, which is what we'd hope to see at this time
01:40of year.
01:41So around about 20kg, which is what we'd really hope for a young bear going into torpor and
01:46everything is heading in exactly the right direction.
01:49If anything, I think he's surpassed our expectations.
01:52He's shown how resilient he is, how much attention the keeper team have given to him, has really
01:58benefited his wellbeing.
02:00Those constant observations, I don't think anyone's spent more time with a bear than
02:05our keeper team have in the last six weeks, but it's really refreshing, really exciting
02:10and just so good for us and all of our supporters to be able to provide such a positive update
02:14on Bocci's wellbeing.
02:16So the next stage for Bocci now, we didn't really know what to predict with him at the
02:21moment, but now he's starting to slow down.
02:24He's spending more time inside.
02:26He's not coming out in the mornings.
02:28He's put on all of this weight and it's exactly what we would have hoped.
02:31So what we're hoping and perhaps expecting is that he's going to slow down enough that
02:34he will go into torpor.
02:36He'll have this entire winter period to rest and then when he emerges in early spring,
02:41that will be then a time for the keepers to assess when we can do the reintroduction to
02:46fluff and scruff, something that of course he will be very excited about, they will be
02:50and certainly the keepers here will be too.