Polar Bear Ice Breaker

Sometimes you just need to have a crack at it...

We've done a few different feeders for polar bears, and seen a lot more in action, where the bears responce is to do their natural ice breaker behaviour to try and get the food out.

So for many, many years we've really wanted to create a device that allows this behaviour to actually happen.

Well thanks to the serendipity of an amazing team building group and Alex Bennet from Premier Forest Products helping us get the perfect timber for the job, we've finally managed to create our first prototype to do just that for the boys at Yorkshire Wildlife Park!

The feeder is designed around a heavy duty plastic tray, which will allow large blocks of ice, up to about 4" thick to be inserted over a cavity containing the food.

The three teams did an incredible job of problem solving and putting these brand new designs together, and all of them even finished the build earlier than expected which was an amazing effort!

The devices where then trialled with the Parks two biggest male bears to see what they made of them.

Hamish was first to give it a go and actually went for a digging techinque over the ice breaker, and we know from the keepers that he actually spent several hours patiently engaged in this behaviour.

Mark managed to break on of the ice sheets while inserting it, so the first box Sisu investigated was already partially broken, but even still he had to put some effort in rolling the heavy box over and over and trying to open a bigger gap to gain his reward beneath!

And we now that once the food came out the bears had a fantastic time dragging them into the water, where luckily they float!

Our Coursecheck Feedback was great too: 'Team Building with BITE provided a very well organised and enjoyable team building day that exceeded expectations - it was an excellent day and I would highly recommend Team Building with BITE to others.'

Once again a massive thanks to this team building group, you really all did an incredible job! And thank you to the keepers for their faith in us testing out this new concept!

For more information about our unique team building events, courses or enclosure deign service, head to www.TeamBuildingwithBITE.com or email [email protected]