We start today with a photo of little Zellie Bear, our newest arrival, in The Cub House.  She is eating well and is cleaning her dish, eating the medicine-laced applesauce along with a few choice goodies.  The curators have to be very careful not to provide too much food, to prevent her from eating too much at a time, which could be harmful to a little cub that has been so hungry and malnourished.

Zellie Bear in The Cub House.

Here is her food dish – look at the assortment of fruits and nuts.  Looks good enough to eat!  You will notice that the curators cut up the fruits as they did for the similarly-sized cubs several months ago.  Now, of course, they do not cut up the food that is thrown over the fences in the Wild Enclosures.

Zellie’s food. It will help her to grow.

Taking a look at some cubs in Wild Enclosure 1 – they were the smallest cubs onsite until Zellie arrived.  They are still very interested in food.

Rufus Bear sitting on his perch.

Rufus hears something.

Rufus hears the sound of dinner being served.

Rufus starts to climb down.

He comes down quickly.

Another cub in Wild Enclosure 1 finds an apple.  This was part of the dinner service, and Linus is ready to eat.

Linus finds a nice whole apple.

Linus and the other cubs in WE1 are always hungry.

Meanwhile, in Wild Enclosure 2 the cubs are given part of a deer carcass that was donated.  People often ask if we give the cubs meat, and the answer is usually “no,” but in this case, the curators decided to offer some deer meat, which bears in the wild would eat if they found a road-killed animal.  The results were interesting.  Of the five cubs in Wild Enclosure 2, only Derby and Pumpkin Bear showed any interest, and each of them dragged a piece of the carcass off into the underbrush to eat in private.  That is exactly what a wild bear would do with a find like this.  Once again we see how much of the cubs’ behavior is instinctive.

Derby Bear pulled the meat off into the underbrush.

Pumpkin Bear did the same thing with the other piece.

We never fail to be amazed at the behavior of the cubs.  We have learned so much from them, and will continue to do so as time goes on.