Teddy bear isn't made of leather – but something much more unsettling

The tradition of giving teddy bears to young children goes back around 100 years.

They're usually soft and cuddly, a companion at bed time.

This 'teddy bear,' however, isn't quite so endearing. Not to most.

It's made from the placenta of a human woman. A touch more unnerving than fur or its fake equivalent, we think.

Please bear with us. We'll explain what's going on here.

The creation is the work of designer Alex Green. He actually made it way back in 2009, but the bear recently popped up, after all these years, on National Teddy Bear Day in the US.

Bemused?. Why would anyone make a teddy bear out of someone's otherwise discarded placenta?

Green explained his bear to ABC News in 2009:

"I was very interested in how it was discarded unceremoniously as medical waste, why it's discarded and how we could bring it back.

"It was really about provoking a debate about placentas and how we treat them.

"Of course a lot of people feel it's grotesque.

At the time, the placenta bear appears to have somewhat slipped under the net. Or at least it didn't get noticed over here.

Green said he thinks placentas deserve "a symbolic treatment".

Some people might eat placenta, for example, or rub it all over their face.

Green's bear seems a step further then a lot of placenta-based remembrance.

He made the keepsake after experimenting with animal equivalents.

To do it, he cured the organ with salt to kill bacteria and remove water. And then he softened it with a mixture of eggs and tannins

Green then cut and sewed the bear pieces and filled the 'toy' with brown rice. It's about five inches tall.

How does it feel?

"It's more heavy than you'd imagine," Green explained.

"They're more the sort of thing that you'd stick on a mantel pieces.

"It feels soft, somewhere between leather and suede but it's much more flexible than leather – it's bendy."