Aquário de São Paulo

This guide to the Aquário de São Paulo follows Aurora and Peregrino, the only polar bears in Brazil, flown in from a zoo in Kazan, Russia, into a chilled exhibit built in a city that has never seen snow. It traces the decade-long feud between the aquarium's owner, who calls the enclosure conservation, and an activist who picketed the building weekly, insisting no exhibit could replace melting Arctic ice, each predicting a different fate for the bears. Keepers say the bears adapted faster than anyone expected, learning to swim laps in chilled water.