Wilbaer, the latest polar bear cub to charm German public

Wilbaer the polar bear
Wilbaer the polar bear cub and his mother. Photograph: Berndt Weissbrod/EPA

Stuttgart's Wilhelma zoo presented four-month-old Wilbaer to the public today, bringing the fluffy cub outdoors alongside his mother, Corinna.

Wilbaer's debut came just a week after the Nuremberg zoo's female cub made her debut. Flocke has been hand raised since her mother was seen tossing the cub around her enclosure in January.

But Wilbaer initially stuck close by his mother when he emerged on Wednesday.

The cub sniffed at rocks and tentatively stuck his front paws in the water, before eventually following his mother's lead and diving in.

Wilbaer was born on December 10, a day before Flocke.

However, the zoo only announced his birth at the end of February, citing the media frenzy that surrounded the Berlin zoo's hand-raised polar bear cub Knut last year as its reason for keeping the arrival under wraps at first.

Still, zoo officials say they have had his name a combination of the zoo's name and the German for bear, "Baer" registered as a trademark.