Boki the bear makes remarkable recovery after brain surgery

KentOnline / KMTV

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.

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