It’s Officially Too Cold Even for Polar Bears

Lincoln Park Zoo's lone polar bear resident will spend the cold weather days inside

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Todd Rosenberg Photography 2013 / Lincoln Park Zoo

Anana the Lincoln Park Zoo polar bear

Here’s how most jokes about the below freezing temperatures will go today:

Man it’s cold!

How cold is it?

It’s so cold even polar bears aren’t crazy enough to be outside!

Truth is, if you hear this one-liner, it’s likely in reference to Anana, the lone polar bear resident of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. She’s been moved to a climate controlled environment to stay out of the city’s hyper frigid weather Tuesday, which went as low as 9 degrees below zero.

Typically polar bears inhabit environments that are always this cold. Average winter temperatures in the arctic circle can be as frigid as 40 below, which is what wind chills were expected to be in Chicago on Tuesday. But the animals who live at the North Pole tend to put on a layer of fat before winter sets in that would keep them warm. Zookeepers say Anana hasn’t put on the pounds because of the comparably warmer weather of the Midwest.

“She doesn’t typically enjoy the very cold much,” Sharon Dewar, zoo spokesperson told “Typically they wouldn’t need that insulation and it would make them uncomfortable going into summer.”

So instead of the makeshift habitat provided for her, Anana will miss out on the worst of the cold weather, spending it inside a climate controlled area of the zoo for the remainder of the Windy City’s big chill.