Other good things to know about BPB:
When a polar bear wants to play, he communicates this to another bear by wagging his head from side to side.
An adult bear may also initiate a "play session" by standing on his hind legs, with chin lowered to his chest and front paws hanging by his side.
Polar bears were once thought to be aimless wanderers, continually on the move. Scientists now believe that polar bears, like other members of the bear family, have distinct territories, or home ranges. However, a polar bear's home range can be enormous! One Alaskan polar bear was found to have a home range 45 times the size of Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains National Park, (That explains his popularity with the females of the Southeast!)
As part of a study funded by the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, Ames researched the behavior of polar bears. She has seen her subject stack heaps of pipes that they later knock over in elaborate games. (She was very impressed with this, though I was the one that showed him how to do it) She has also watched them smash open ice blocks in order to extract imbedded fish. (Don't take much to impress some, I guess)
Her conclusion: the great white bears are just as smart as apes.
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