Nissan was heading from Russia by air, sea and road all the way to the Polar Project at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster, England when the truck briefly stopped at Calais in France.
While the truck was stopped, several asylum seekers forced the back door open and climbed in, apparently not fazed at all by the fact that there was a cage inside, housing Nissan the polar bear.
A car was following the truck at the time of the incident and a passenger, Simon Bridger, caught the whole thing on his phone. Bridger told the Sun that it took the four migrants a mere 17 seconds to vault over the barrier on to the road and break open the doors to the truck:
“They must have had the surprise of their lives. It shows how desperate they are to get to Britain.”
As reported by the Metro, the asylum seekers must have been desperate indeed to share space with a fully grown polar bear, but it turned out to be a short-lived experience, as around 10 minutes after this the French police stopped the vehicle and removed the migrants from the truck, as can be seen in the video above.
According to Sky News, Nissan, a 22-month-old polar bear was apparently not fazed by sharing his space with four asylum seekers and when support staff checked up on him, they said he was fine.
The polar bear traveled from the Moscow Zoo by air to Frankfurt, where he then headed out by road to Calais before catching a ferry to the UK.
He arrived at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park Wednesday, where he was found to be fine and in perfect health. The video below shows his arrival at the park where he will eventually spend time with two other male polar bears, Victor, 17 and Pixel, 2, housed in the spacious 10-acre Project Polar reserve.
The reserve was purpose-built for the polar bears and has four sections including a landscaped hilly area, grass filled valleys and lakes of up to eight meters deep for swimming and diving.
Once Nissan is settled, he will join Victor and Pixel as part of the European breeding program. The Yorkshire Wildlife Park was set up as an area to house polar bears who are not currently needed in the breeding program.
