Teens in Hot Water Over Polar Bear Selfie

Toronto students hopped a fence to see cub up close
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted May 24, 2014 7:47 AM CDT

Today's adventures in ill-advised selfies involves a polar bear, but fortunately it doesn't end the way you think it might. As the Toronto Star explains, it happened during a high school field trip to the Toronto Zoo, when two students hopped a barrier to get closer to a polar bear cub in a fenced enclosure. “It looked lonely, so we thought, ‘Oh let’s just go closer and take a picture,'" explains one of them, Samuel Gonzalez. They shot video and took photos, and at one point the bear even licks Gonzalez's hand through the fence. A zoo employee finally shooed them away.

It probably would have ended there had Gonzalez not posted video to Instagram of the encounter. Now the zoo is mad, the school is mad, and his mother is mad. “He knows I am not happy with him," she says. "Teenagers always think they are right when they are wrong.” The zoo is investigating the breach and working with the school on "appropriate measures," reports MetroNews Canada, but it doesn't plan to get police involved. (Click to read about a teen selfie that ended tragically in India.)

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