Vets at the University of Edinburgh’s royal school of veterinary studies performed emergency surgery to remove a moon bear’s tongue after excessive swelling saw it grow to 6.5 pounds.
“I’ve worked with bears for over 10 years and I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Heather Bacon with the University. “It’s pretty astonishing.”
“Having to carry around 3kg of tongue is not normal and that’s a lot of weight on his jaw and head,” continued Bacon. “Also, since he was dragging it around on the floor, from a hygiene point of view it’s pretty unpleasant and he couldn’t ever close his mouth. Now he should be able to close his mouth and manipulate food.”
The bizarre and unprecedented case caused the bear’s tongue to become so heavy it hung out of its mouth and dragged on the ground. It’s believed the two-year-old bear suffered from a congenital condition or elephantiasis — a parasitic infection carried by mosquitos — but it’s never been reported to have affected bears or any other animals.
There had been a previous attempt to remove excess tissue, ease swelling and save the tongue last year, but they were forced to remove it after the condition worsened.
“We had a lot of discussion and debate because it’s a major surgery that you cannot undo but we felt in terms of his quality of life it was the best way to give him as normal a life as possible,” said Bacon.
“It’s likely he’ll have a period of learning and adaptation because he’s obviously never experienced this before.”
