Holly with cubeToday, in addition to Holly’s usual bottle, carrots, and romaine lettuce, the staff gave her a cube containing red grapes. She was quick to learn that whacking the cube caused grapes to fall out. It didn’t take her long to get them all.
Bears have paws that can rotate to smack a cube or to grip and manipulate it. They have minds to go with those abilities. In the wild, bears turn over rocks, tear apart logs and stumps, and hook their claws around branches to draw the branch and its clumps of fruit to their mouths. Holly was intrigued with her new cube, and the staff was intrigued with Holly as they watched her solve the problem of extracting the grapes.
Holly works to get grapesThey remarked that she was less gentle than other bears have been with the cube. Each bear has its own personality, as Jane Goodall mentioned about animals in general in her interview about Disney’s new bear movie at http://time.com/64042/jane-goodall-disney-bears/.
Lily Fans continue to share super ideas to make the Bear Center and the new addition more intriguing, interactive, and educational to more age classes, and beyond that, to make more information more available to visitors and the public. We love the talent and creativity among our supporters, and we are excited about the educational possibilities that free cell phone apps could provide for Bear Center visitors and the public in general. More on this as it develops.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center