Bears - Sounds Wild
Hibernating zoo bears

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Hibernating zoo bears

At the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage on a cold winter day, many of the animals are still active. But not the bears - they're hibernating. That's not true at all zoos. Zookeeper Samantha Lavin said captive bears don't hibernate if food is available. Since they don't undergo a winter weight loss like wild bears, they can get overweight. She said more zoos are allowing their bears hibernate during winter. Although it makes the animals unavailable for viewing, it helps them stay leaner and healthier, and they live longer.

The Alaska zoo has two brown bears and two black bears in separate areas. In the fall they start tearing up plants and sometimes digging in their exhibits. This lets the keepers know they are getting ready to hibernate, so they cut back and then stop feeding them. The bears have den buildings and are provided a lot of straw - the black bears got eight bales, and the brown bears got 25 bales of straw. Lavin said the bears move the straw around and build nests to sleep in. They sleep separately. She said the older black bear went down well before Halloween and won't rouse at all until the first week of May.

The brown bears go down almost a month later - after building their nests, they went down on Nov. 17. She said they get up once in a while, usually on a relatively warm day, and will drink some water and then go back to sleep. They come out of hibernation in mid-March, much earlier than the black bears.