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Teddy Bear Look Alike
Right up the hill from the polar bear and around the corner is the grizzly bear habitat. There were three grizzly bears visible when I first arrived on the scene. Grizzly bears are also cute. They look like your teddy bear although they don't want to hug you or cuddle you like your teddy bear does. I have only seen a grizzly bear one other time in person, and that was in a national park from a car as the bear was on the side of the road.
The grizzly bear habitat was quite large and featured a large hill in the background made out of rock that the bears could climb up. In the front of the habitat were a series of pools, some logs and brush to make it look foresty. One grizzly was on the ground in front of one of the pools with head resting on paws.1 Another grizzly was sitting on top of the rock hill, looking down.2 Another grizzly was in the corner next to part of the rock wall, sleeping upside down in a semi curled position.3
The grizzly on the rock decided to descend the hill and get in the water and play as they also like water. There was a large round ball in the water hole that she also played with. Whenever the bears had itches, they would scratch them. The one in the pool used the log that was lying over part of the pool to scratch her back by rubbing against it.4 Another bear, outside of the water, scratched her neck by rubbing it against a boulder outside of one of the pools.5
A fourth bear emerged from the left corner of the habitat. She had been on top of the rock hill, hidden somewhere out of view. She looked at the spectators from her perch atop the hill.6
People were amazed by their visibly long claws and making remarks about how tough the ball had to be to survive them.7 The grizzly in the pool would put one of the toys in her mouth and thrash about in the water, holding the toy in her teeth. She would thrust her head back and forth, clenching the toy, and it would create a series of large splashes in the pool.8
Oh, I'm calling these bears female as well, because there were several of them in this habitat together, and I don't know if male bears would want to be together this way unless they were raised together and young. But both polar bears and grizzly bears are solitary animals in the wild, so to see several together was an interesting experience.
Two grizzly bears almost confronted each other. One was in the pool, and the other was standing outside the pool. They faced and looked at each other. They muscled up and their body language tensed up, but they did not start fighting and there wasn't a lot of growling. The one on the outside of the pool walked away to do something else. I believe, in the wild they try to avoid confrontation unless they feel it is necessary and in general their scent markings are partially to prevent coming in close contact with each other.
I became intrigued with the sleeping bear in the corner by the rock wall and made my way over to that side of the spectator areas to observe. There were about three separate areas for the spectators to view the grizzly bears from. Almost as soon as I got closer, the bear began to wake up. She stirred a little and then got to her feet.9 But when she got to her feet, she just stood in place for a while looking out. A mother nearby remarked to her young child, "The bear gets up like you do, very slowly." After a minute or so the newly-awakened bear walked forward and began to move around before settling in a sand pit.10
