Last week we noted that Japanese zookeepers at the Kushiro city zoo had trouble getting two polar bears to mate because they discovered that one of the female bears had been misidentified as a male. Why is it so hard to classify the gender of a polar bear? In short, because polar bears are very furry, especially "down there". However, one way to tell the gender of a polar bear is to see how it pees: if the urine looks like it is coming out of the belly, it is male; from the tail, it is female. However, most bears squat to pee, so even the pee test isn't a reliable way to classify the cuties. [Slate]

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