Polar bear eating pumpkin – Photo courtesy of Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat

It’s not everyday that Henry the polar bear sees something that weighs more than he does.

At 1,200-pounds, the polar bear is the world’s largest land predator, but here was something substantially heavier, and it was just sitting there in his enclosure.

Henry the polar bear eating pumpkin – Photo courtesy of Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat

Defensive at first, Henry eventually dug into the sweet crunchy flesh of a giant, 1,400 lbs. pumpkin that was donated to the nonprofit that looks after him. The photos will steal a chuckle out of anyone.

Reported first by CTV News, the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat received the pumpkin as a total coincidence, and the organization’s manager Amy Baxendell-Young told the outlet how it happened.

“One of my staff was driving up from down south and ended up directly behind this pumpkin as it was on the highway,” she said.

Her staff member gave her a call, and said that the truck carrying the massive gourd had a logo on the side: Aidie Creek Gardens. Baxendell-Young decided to call them up.

“And pretty quickly they got back to me and said, if we don’t take it, it’s just going in the compost. Henry actually came out and didn’t know what it was—and got actually quite defensive … because I think he was just quite shocked at this new thing in his enclosure.”

Evolved to eat mostly baby seals which are all fat, a polar bear can zoom through a pumpkin without putting on any weight at all. Unlike for humans, for whom a pumpkin or squash is a complex carb with polyphenols and fiber, for a bear it’s all empty calories.

Henry having eaten his fill – Photo courtesy of Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat

The Cochrane Habitat in Ontario is the world’s only nonprofit organization that provides sanctuary to polar bears in need of human care and who can’t live in the wild anymore. They often receive presents for their bears around Polar Bear Awareness Week.

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Photos released by the habitat show Henry in something of a food coma after smashing around a third of the pumpkin in one sitting.

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