Polar bear cub saved from mother's jaws snoozes happily in the care of its new keeper

The yet-unnamed baby seemed in grave danger when its mother Vera, began violently swinging it around by the scruff of its neck.

The 8lb baby had to be rescued by keepers at the zoo in Nuremberg amid concerns its mother would harm or even kill it.

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The new cub happily snoozes

But the cub, thought to be a female, is now doing well and is being hand fed high-fat milk every four hours.

The baby, which has just began to crawl will make its public debut by early April and the deputy mayor of Nuremberg wants to hold a competition to name it.

The decision to remove the baby from its mother's care came after a controversial zoo experiment with a tragic outcome.

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Feeding time: The new cub has a healthy appetite

An attempt to force the bears to raise their cubs as nature intended has already led to two others being eaten by their confused mother, Wilma.

The grisly find forced keepers to move in on Vera and check on her cub, despite previously stating the cubs would not be bottle-fed as bears in captivity often are.

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Nurture: Mother Vera appears to play with and groom her cub, cradling it in her massive paws in what to onlookers might seem to be a natural display...

Even when they later realised that the mothers had failed to bond with their offspring-officials said it was vital that the tiny cubs should be reared "naturally", even admitting they would leave them to starve.

In the wild, cubs whom the mother cannot care for are often killed and then eaten - protein is not to be wasted when the carnivores have to survive temperatures of -70c.

Last weekend, zoo staff became worried when Vera did not appear to be feeding her cub, which she had hidden in a man-made den carved out of rock inside her enclosure.

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Wilma's cubs had also remained inside their den.

But the zoo refused to check on them, saying they did not want repeats of "Knut-mania" - a reference to the worldwide outcry after a baby polar bear faced starvation at Berlin Zoo last year.

Abandoned by his mother at birth, animal rights activists claimed that Knut should die rather than be raised by humans.

But zoo officials disagreed, rearing him by hand in defiance of death threats by extremists.

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Harsh lesson: In the wild, polar bears kill and eat cubs they cannot care for - perhaps a tragic sign that the zoo's experiment worked only too well

Nuremberg officials took a sterner line on the raising of their cubs.

As radio phone-ins and internet sites were bombarded with pleas to save the tiny animals, deputy director Helmut Maegdefrau insisted they would not intervene.

"If you don't let the mothers practise, they'll never learn how to bring up their cubs," he said.

"If we were to keep checking, we would disturb them and make it more likely that something goes wrong."

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Yet something had already gone wrong. On Monday morning, zoo staff heard Wilma pawing at the gates of her den, where it was believed she was raising her litter.

Keepers had assumed that there was no crying from her cubs because they were content and fed.

But when zoo keepers let Wilma into a separate area to investigate, the den was empty.

Wilma's customarily ravenous appetite had also disappeared and the obvious conclusion was drawn.

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In safe hands now: The surviving cub is rescued

Last night, Vera's surviving cub was being examined by vets in case being thrown about by its mother had caused internal injuries.

Now the zoo is facing just as rough a ride from an outraged international community.

Let's hope that Vera's sole surviving cub will grow up as healthy and happy as the now one-year-old Knut who has his own TV show and blog - and not care whether it is raised by humans holding bottles of milk.