Researcher Heidi Keen has taught the grizzly bears different gestures to help her figure out their moods. The bears personalities come out in their gestures, Keen says, and only one bear is left handed.
credit:
Courtney Flatt
Researchers at Washington State University’s Bear Research Center are working to help captive animals better enjoy their environment. Danielle Rivet feeds a bear an apple slice as Heidi Keen monitors the bear's response.
credit:
Courtney Flatt
Grizzly bears explore their pen. Zoo managers say keeping animals psychologically happy is as important as providing them with good veterinary care.
credit:
Courtney Flatt
The bears gobble up their treat, apple slices, as fast as Danielle Rivet can feed them. Each bear eats about 13 apples in five minutes. One benefit to the study is how quickly the bears can complete the tasks.
credit:
Courtney Flatt
PULLMAN, Wash. – You may have visited zoos where the animals look less-than-thrilled sitting in their cages. That may become a less common sight, thanks to Northwest scientists’ work to make captive bears happier bears.
The project into improving grizzly bears’ moods is taking place at Washington State University’s Bear Research Center. On this day, two bears pace back and forth in a narrow pen. You can hear the bears growl and sniff as they explore the area. When the bears reach the end of the pen, they twirl their bodies in a sort of pirouette motion.
It’s that type of repetitive movement that researcher Heidi Keen is working to prevent.
“A lot of bears exhibit those behaviors in zoos. There’s a lot of debate as to why those behaviors originate, but it can be related to lack of stimulation in the environment,” Keen says.
Zoo managers say keeping animals psychologically happy is as important as providing them with good veterinary care.
Nearly every morning and every afternoon, Keen gives the center’s eight grizzlies different toys to play with. (She calls them enrichment items.)
Keen uses a system of gray flashcards, apple slices and gestures she taught the bears. This all helps her figure out which toys the animals like to play with. Keen is testing the difference between cowhides and orange traffic cones.
“You can’t just ask the animal, ‘Okay, so how are you feeling, and how did you respond?’” Keen says.
Ultimately, Keen’s research could help zoos could have almost instant feedback on the “toys” in animals’ pens. Providing better environments for captive animals helps with their mental health.
A 425-pound grizzly saunters up to the edge of a wire fence. She plops down right in front of the researchers.
“So this is Peeka,” Keen says. She says she’s enjoyed learning each bear’s personality.
The researchers start to measure the bear’s mood. They feed Peeka apple slices each time she makes the correct gesture.
“You can see she’s very enthusiastic,” Keen says.
Peeka a scarfs down the treats as fast as research assistant Danielle Rivet can feed them. The grizzly eats around thirteen apples in five minutes. Rivet’s been helping out at the Bear Research Center since May.
“It’s kind of scary, I guess, the first couple times you do it. You have to really make sure your fingers stay behind the fence. They do try and grab the apples with their lips, but you still have to be careful,” Rivet laughs.
The Washington State University Bear Research Center opened in 1986 to protect wild grizzlies. The animals at the center are not able to return to the wild. That’s one reason scientists decided to start studying the captive animals to provide research to zoos.
Keen’s study would allow zoos to provide a better environment for captive animals.
“We can have an almost daily reading of how animals are experiencing their environment or what enrichment items are working,” Keen says.
David Shepherdson works with the Oregon Zoo in Portland. The zoo has studied animals’ psychological well being for the past 40 years. He says Keen is basically developing a new tool to communicate with a wide variety of mammals — not just grizzly bears.
“For a lot of animals, the kinds of training that she’s doing with the bears would be feasible. If it’s feasible with all bears, obviously a primate would easily be able to learn these tasks, and so would an elephant. Certainly it could be a useful tool,” Shepherdson says.
Back at Washington State University, Keen says she thinks her research benefiting other captive animals. After finishing up Peeka’s experiment, Keen takes her to a large, open pen to play. It’s a more appealing setting for the bear that played with traffic cones during the experiment. Keen glances at the day’s results.
Reporter: “So, she was happy today?”
Keen: “Nope, not as happy as usual. But she got the traffic cones today instead of cowhide. That’s kind of what we expect to see is that she’s a little disappointed in the sense that she’s not getting the best option.”
But, Keen says, it’s important to note that she studies moods overall, not on a day-to-day basis.
“We all have better and worse days, right?” Keen says.
If Keen and her colleagues are successful, they’ll make these bears’ “worse days” better.
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