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DULUTH, Minnesota – A brown bear from Alaska to the Zoo du Lac Supérieur in northeast Minnesota has a new, sparkling silver canine tooth in a leading procedure for a bear.
The 800 pound tundra was put on sedation on Monday and equipped with a new crown – the largest dental crown ever created, according to the zoo.
“He now has a little shine in his smile,” the Zoo’s marketing manager Caroline Routley said on Wednesday.
The one hour procedure was carried out by Dr. Grace Brown, a veterinary dentist certified to the commission who helped to carry out a radicular channel on the same tooth two years ago. When Tundra reduced the tooth, the decision was made to give it a stronger new crown. The titanium alloy crown, manufactured by crowns of post Falls creatures, Idaho, was created for the tundra from a wax tooth caste.
Brown plans to publish an article on the procedure of the Journal of Veterinary Dentistry later this year.
“This is the largest crown ever created in the world,” she said. “It must be published.”
Tundra and her brother, Banks, have been at the Duluth zoo since the age of 3 months after the death of their mother.
Tundra is now 6 years old and, at her height on her back legs, measures about 8 feet high. The bear size required a member of the armed response team formed from the zoo to be present in the room – a pistol at hand – in case the animal wakes up during the procedure, said Routley. But the procedure took place without a hitch, and Tundra is now back in his home, behaving and eating normally.
Other veterinary teams have not always been so lucky. In 2009, a zoo veterinarian at the Zoo and Aquarium Henry Doorly in Omaha, Nebraska, suffered serious arm injuries while carrying out a routine medical examination on a Malaysian tiger of 200 pounds.
The tiger came out of sedation when the veterinarian inadvertently brushed his mustaches, making the tiger bite reflexively on the veterinarian’s forearm.
