Santra the Bear’s Yoga Stretches at Ähtäri Zoo, Finland

Santra, a female brown bear at Ähtäri Zoo in Finland, became famous in 2010 as “the bear who practises yoga”. Slovenian visitor Meta Penca photographed her sitting on a rock, holding her hind legs up in a neat V, and the pictures soon spread around the world.

Santra the bear’s “yoga” routine at Ähtäri Zoo

Penca, a 29-year-old web programmer, watched Santra go through a whole sequence of stretches. “She held her legs with her hands for a minute or two in a V position and then put them down and relaxed,” she said. The bear then raised and straightened each leg in turn, holding each one for a while.

According to the reports at the time, the stretching lasted about 15 minutes and was something Santra did every day after waking from a nap. The photographs, credited to Meta Penca / BNPS, were published in September 2010.

Santra and Santeri, two of Ähtäri’s oldest residents

Santra shared her enclosure with her mate, Santeri. The pair were among the zoo’s longest-standing residents, having lived there almost since Ähtäri Zoo was founded in 1973.

Ähtäri Zoo covers 60 hectares of forest in central Finland, about 300 kilometres north of Helsinki, and has kept more than 60 species, around 300 animals in all, with a focus on species of the northern coniferous forest. It made world headlines again in January 2018, when a pair of giant pandas arrived on loan from China; they were sent back in 2024, years ahead of schedule, because of the cost of their care. The zoo closed in autumn 2025 after its parent company went bankrupt, and reopened as Ähtäri Mesizoo on 16 February 2026.

Brown bears: Finland’s national animal

The brown bear is Finland’s national animal, and around 2,000 of them live in the country’s forests. Eurasian brown bears are big: adult males average 350 to 500 kilograms, while females usually weigh 150 to 300 kilograms. Despite their reputation as meat-eaters, today’s European brown bears get only about 10 to 15 per cent of their diet from animal matter; the rest is mostly plant food. In the wild they live about 20 to 30 years.

Santra’s stretches are a lovely reminder of how flexible these huge animals are. Enjoy that kind of moment from a safe distance: watch wild bears only from organised hides or with a guide. For more bears, see watching bears at McNeil River, or switch species with these baby penguin photographs.

Related reading

• Helsinki Zoo’s Brown Bears Return to the Snow
• Casey Anderson and Brutus: The Bear Behind Montana Grizzly Encounter
• Sulo Karjalainen and the Bears at Kuusamo: A Historical Film
• Doug Seus and His Trained Bears: The Film and Its Context
• Black Bears on Santa Elena Canyon’s Wall: A Kayaker’s Video
• A Black Bear Retrieves Her Cub Beside a Road in Kootenay

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