It was playtime at the Pittsburgh Zoo this week when Dusty Shutt stopped by to take some of her entertaining animal photographs. Splashing around with a plastic 55 gallon drum(called an enrichment), Meesca the Polar Bear dives into the water at the at the Water’s Edge Exhibit while Sosa, on the right, paces in the background.
The amazing Water’s Edge Exhibit take you on a journey to a coastal fishing village that offers two enormous underwater viewing tunnels and indoor and outdoor viewing windows, giving you a unique closeup of the stars of the show: Meesca and Sosa.
Native to the Arctic Circle, Polar Bears are the largest land carnivore and the largest of all bears. They are more than twice the size of Siberian Tigers. In 2008, the US Government listed the Polar Bear as a Threatened Species under the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act.
As the official mascots of the Pittsburgh Polar Bear Club, they are an inspiration to the approximately 200 river-jumpers who showed up for this years annual New Year’s Day Jump at Pittsburgh’s Mon Wharf. Meesca’s impressive long distance dive in Dusty Shutt’s photograph shows why.
Dusty Shutt's Wildlife Photography 