Wildwood Trust: Secrets of burning Christmas calories unveiled for the first time!

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The secrets of burning Christmas calories unveiled for the first time!

While the rest of us stuff our faces, most animals are suffering from lack of food over the festive season.
In these desperate months they have to find ingenious ways to stop from starving to death; living on fat reserves or eating stored food.

Perhaps the most ingenious animal at getting through winter are Kent's very own rescued brown bears Fluff & Scruff, who more or less stopped eating many weeks ago and are now in a state of semi-hibernation.

While the bears are in this state of semi sleep their heart-warming antics have been hidden from view, but not anymore!

For the first-time visitors can now watch Kent's bears and their amazing antics as they groggily toss and turn or wake up only to fall back into slumber on a giant TV screen, right next to their enclosure.

Wildwood is perhaps the only British zoo encouraging their bears to enter a hibernating state, as bears don't necessarily need hibernation in captivity, however it is believed to greatly improve their welfare.

Click here to watch video and footage of the sleeping bears

Losing weight while sleeping

Bear hibernation is still somewhat a mystery to researchers worldwide. It is known, that when a bear hibernates, its heartbeat drops, and its metabolism slows, without negative effects.

This naturally affects their weight. Studies have shown some brown bears losing 25% of their body mass during hibernation.

Although the Wildwood bears are only entering a semi – hibernation state, we still expect them to lose 40 to 50 kg this winter

Rescue bears and still learning

The two Eurasian brown bears at Wildwood are still learning what it's like to hibernate. They were rescued from a 'canned hunting' operation in Bulgaria 5 years ago. They were forced to live in concrete pits and were never fed enough or felt safe enough to hibernate.

This put great physical and emotional stress on the bears. But after their successful rehabilitation at Wildwood, their happy sleepy antics can be seen by all.

Due to this, visitors may therefore still have a good chance of seeing the bears rolling around, groggily stumbling in their artificial bear cave in between sleepy time.

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Bear keeper Jon Forde said:

"Fluff and Scruff are in the best condition of their entire lives, they have gone into this year's torpor at the heaviest weight they've ever been and at each of the last 3 torpors we've seen massive improvements to their health. We can't wait to see how they improve this time"

Director general Paul Whitfield said:

''They desperately needed to remember what is was like to be bears and we quickly decided, that we wanted to give them every possibility to achieve this, including allowing them to sleep as they would in the wild.

Adopt a bear - help Wildwood do more conservation

Get outdoors during Christmas

While bears may lose those extra pounds dreaming away over Christmas, the rest of us have to work at it.
And as many know, a good walk will not only help your digestion, it also provides physical wellbeing.

With beautiful trails in a 40 acres setting of natural woodland, Wildwood offers just that.
On top of that, there's the tranquillity of getting out into quiet nature, after those hectic Christmas days.

*****ENDS*****

CONTACT

Wildwood Trust: +44(0)1227 712 111

Julie Luna Bayer: julie@wildwoodtrust.org or 01227 209618 or 07453 497086

Peter Smith: peter@wildwoodtrust.org or 07986 828229

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Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/thewildwoodtrust

ABOUT WILDWOOD

Wildwood Trust opened in 1999 as a centre of excellence for the conservation of British wildlife, and was established as a registered charity in 2002.
Wildwood is Kent's best British wildlife park. Home to over 200 native animals, past and present and set in 40 acres of beautiful ancient woodland where visitors can see bears, wolves, bison, deer, owls, foxes, red squirrels, wild boar, lynx, wild horses, badgers and beavers plus many more.
As one of the leading British animal conservation charities in the UK, Wildwood Trust is dedicated to saving Britain's most threatened wildlife. Wildwood Trust have taken part in many ground-breaking conservation programmes to date, which include, saving the water vole, using wild horses to help restore Kent's most precious nature reserves, bringing the extinct European beaver back to Britain and returning the hazel dormouse & red squirrel to areas where they have been made extinct.