Zoologists at London Zoo have said they are 'hopeful' that their prized sore-headed bears, named Boris and Ken by keepers, will mate, despite an unpromising start in their tiny enclosure.
'Now that they have begun to recover from several weeks of disorientating electioneering, we have finally put them together in the same part of the zoo,' said zoo manager Catherine Tilley. 'The lift is the perfect place for these two docile, unintelligent creatures to get intimate with one another. It's surely just a matter of time before their overpowering attractiveness takes hold.'
Dr Tilley denied that the project had been a failure after the larger, friskier of the two bears, Boris, took a swipe at Ken and uttered a series of angry growls. 'This is just foreplay,' she insisted. 'We expect that Ken will begin to utter a series of annoying nasal whines, but once Boris shakes his shaggy mane they will almost certainly begin to mate furiously and energetically all the way up until election night.'
The two animals have been struggling for dominance in their enclosure for several years, with the ageing Ken finally toppled by young buck Boris in 2008. But despite both beasts’ obvious allure to females of other species, Boris has never managed to copulate fully with Ken, which Dr Tilley says is hindering the survival of the species.
‘The two of them have spent enough time buggering things up for the rest of us in the zoo,’ she said. ‘If they just did it to each other instead then maybe they’d leave the rest of us alone to get on with it.’