Quik Pic: bearbathing

Ashlyn, one of our volunteers, caught this shot of Mimi, Yona, and Virginia  hanging out in the pool. (Click here to watch a video of Ursula swimming).  It’s Bear Awareness Week, through Saturday, come by and visit.Read more

Bear Awareness Week!!

Okay Sports Fans, here it is!  The start of a week which revolves around our fuzzy and lovable friends!  They eat a bunch, they sleep a bunch, they shed a bunch – no they’re not Italians – they’re our Bears!  It’s officially Bear Awareness Week!  And we here at the Museum are lucky enough to have 5 of the lovable fuzz buckets that we call part of the family to enjoy each day.  Gus, Ursula, Mimi, Virginia and Yona areRead more

Do you know all the species of bears?

For Bear Awareness Week, I thought I would publish this post from a couple of years ago. Although the population information on each species is a little different now, it still gives you a good idea of the bears’ plight in the wild. We have some great stuff going on for Bear Awareness Week, that you can read about in a post that Erin just wrote. And if you come to the bear overlook this Wednesday or Saturday, you canRead more

Bear Aware!

Next week is Bear Awareness Week, and the North Carolina Piedmont Chapter of the American Association of Zookeepers (AAZK), of which several museum keepers and several keepers from the Duke Lemur Center are a part of, will be heading up our activities this year. Bear Awareness week is a week dedicated to learning about bear behaviors, spreading knowledge about bear species and their plights (6 out of 8 bear species are in danger of extinction), and learning how to cohabitateRead more

Is a bear always a bear?

Keeper Marilyn did a good job of outlining the different kinds of bears in her recent post. But did you know there has been quite a bit of debate about whether one those she listed should be considered a bear? Giant Panda feasting on bamboo Panda bears or more correctly Giant Pandas are native to China and certainly look like bears. But what about the Red Panda? Obviously, it got the name “panda” because it shares many of the featuresRead more

Bile farming of the Asiatic Black Bear

As part of Bear Awareness Week, I thought I’d share the plight of the Asiatic Black Bear (also called the Moon Bear for the yellow crescent across their chest). I first learned about this bear at a bear-keeping conference I attended last year. Our keynote speaker was Jill Robinson, founder of Animals Asia Foundation, who works on Moon Bear rescues, and by the end of her talk the whole audience was in tears. While China works on a “green” OlympicsRead more