Alaska brown bear has a brand new, shiny smile after getting an enormous steel crown for a canine tooth
DULUTH, Minn. — An Alaska brown bear on the Lake Superior Zoo in northeastern Minnesota has a gleaming new silver-colored canine tooth in a first-of-its-kind process for a bear.
The 800-pound Tundra was put beneath sedation Monday and fitted with a brand new crown — the most important dental crown ever created, in line with the zoo.
“He is bought a bit glint in his smile now,” zoo advertising supervisor Caroline Routley mentioned Wednesday.
The hour-long process was performed by Dr. Grace Brown, a board-certified veterinary dentist who helped carry out a root canal on the identical tooth two years in the past. When Tundra reinjured the tooth, the choice was made to offer him a brand new, stronger crown. The titanium alloy crown, made by Creature Crowns of Put up Falls, Idaho, was created for Tundra from a wax caste of the tooth.
Brown plans to publish a paper on the process within the Journal of Veterinary Dentistry later this 12 months.
“That is the most important crown ever created on the planet,” she mentioned. “It must be printed.”
Tundra and his sibling, Banks, have been on the Duluth zoo since they had been 3 months previous, after their mom was killed.
Tundra is now 6 years previous and, at his full top on his hind legs, stands about 8 toes tall. The sheer dimension of the bear required a member of the zoo’s educated armed response group to be current within the room — a gun inside arm’s attain — in case the animal awoke in the course of the process, Routley mentioned. However the process went and not using a hitch, and Tundra is now again in his habitat, behaving and consuming usually.
Different veterinary groups haven’t all the time been as fortunate. In 2009, a zoo veterinarian at Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha, Nebraska, suffered extreme accidents to his arm whereas performing a routine medical examination on a 200-pound Malaysian tiger.
The tiger was popping out of sedation when the vet inadvertently brushed its whiskers, inflicting the tiger to reflexively chew down on the vet’s forearm.