The WSU Bear Center has a treadmill, but it’s not exercise equipment to get in shape. It’s helping scientists learn more about how much energy bears use when they’re walking at various speeds.
Several of our bears at the WSU Bear Center have some new brightly colored jewelry: energy-monitoring collars. The collars will collect vital information from the bears and contribute to a research project.
The WSU Children’s Center has several classes that take field trips to the Bear Center. Here are photos of one class that visited during enrichment preparation.
WSU graduate student Joy Erlenbach is spending her summer in Alaska’s Katmai National Park on a bear research project. Read her account of the work she’s doing.
Hibernating bears have evolved to add as much fat as possible each fall so they can survive several months without eating, and WSU researchers are working to figure out how they do it.
The WSU Bear Center has a treadmill that will be used to measure the energy cost for various activities, including lying, sitting, standing and walking.
Grizzly bears’ long claws enable them to swipe salmon from rivers, dig through ground for rodents, rip apart old tree stumps for insects and scoop out hard terrain to construct large dens