DULUTH, Minn. (AP) \u2014 An Alaska brown bear at the Lake Superior Zoo in northeastern Minnesota has a gleaming new silver-colored canine tooth in a first-of-its-kind procedure for a bear.<\/p>\n
The 800-pound (360-kilogram) Tundra was put under sedation Monday and fitted with a new crown \u2014 the largest dental crown ever created, according to the zoo.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s got a little glint in his smile now,\u201d zoo marketing manager Caroline Routley said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The hour-long procedure was done by Dr. Grace Brown, a board-certified veterinary dentist who helped perform a root canal on the same tooth two years ago. When Tundra reinjured the tooth, the decision was made to give him a new, stronger crown. The titanium alloy crown, made by Creature Crowns of Post Falls, Idaho, was created for Tundra from a wax caste of the tooth.<\/p>\n
Brown plans to publish a paper on the procedure in the Journal of Veterinary Dentistry later this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the largest crown ever created in the world,” she said. \u201cIt has to be published.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tundra and his sibling, Banks, have been at the Duluth zoo since they were 3 months old, after their mother was killed.<\/p>\n
Tundra is now 6 years old and, at his full height on his hind legs, stands about 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall. The sheer size of the bear required a member of the zoo’s trained armed response team to be present in the room \u2014 a gun within arm’s reach \u2014 in case the animal awoke during the procedure, Routley said. But the procedure went without a hitch, and Tundra is now back in his habitat, behaving and eating normally.<\/p>\n
Other veterinary teams have not always been as lucky. In 2009, a zoo veterinarian at Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha, Nebraska, suffered severe injuries to his arm while performing a routine medical exam on a 200-pound (90 kilogram) Malaysian tiger.<\/p>\n
The tiger was coming out of sedation when the vet inadvertently brushed its whiskers, causing the tiger to reflexively bite down on the vet’s forearm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DULUTH, Minn. (AP) \u2014 An Alaska brown bear at the Lake Superior Zoo in northeastern Minnesota has a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[15309,15306,15227,15305,15224,15304,15308,159,15307,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-15077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-alaska-brown-bear","9":"tag-canine-tooth","10":"tag-caroline-routley","11":"tag-dental-crown","12":"tag-grace-brown","13":"tag-lake-superior-zoo","14":"tag-northeastern-minnesota","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-tundra","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114747235650675649","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}