Storyful
One of the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s resident grizzly bears was the picture of winter joy as he reclined cozily in the snow and caught snowflakes on his tongue on Wednesday, November 6.This adorable video captures Emmet, a 19-year-old grizzly bear, catching snowflakes on his tongue at the zoo in downtown Colorado Springs on Wednesday.“We love snow days at the zoo, and we’re open every day of the year,” the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo said in a press release.According to the zoo, Emmet and his “longtime roommate,” Digger, both came to the zoo in 2007 as young bears. They are not biologically related and were both labeled as “nuisance bears after several negative interactions with humans prior to being removed from the wild,” the zoo said.The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo said nuisance bears often “aren’t as lucky as these two,” and end up euthanized or relocated.Grizzlies are native to the Rocky Mountain region and do not hibernate, instead gaining enough weight “to carry them through the cooler season” along with their fluffy coats, the zoo said.Grizzlies go into torpor, a “hormonal physiological and behavioral change triggered by the changing seasons” that sees the bears slow down, sleep more, and “want to eat, eat, eat,” according to the zoo. Credit: Cheyenne Mountain Zoo via Storyful
