Meet Brutus and Buckeye

Age: 4

Weight: 850 pounds (and still growing)

Favorite Food: Salmon

Brutus’ Pet Peeve: Trying to keep Buckeye’s paws off his food

Buckeye’s Pet Peeve: Trying to keep Brutus’ paws off his food

Favorite Pastime: Tearing up trees, swimming –– and finding new things to tear apart

Sibling Rivalry: If one bear wants the other bear’s belongings, a wrestling match ensues (may the best bear win).

Dirty Jokes: “One night, [Brutus] and his brother decided to make a trap door for the keepers,” says Jeremy Carpenter, assistant curator of the North American Region of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. “They dug a three-foot hole by the keeper door to the exhibit. It rained that night and the hole filled with water. If the keepers didn’t jump over the puddle the next day, they would have been waist deep in mud.”

Clawing Around: These burly bears aren’t opposed to a manicure –– and they’ve got a rather rugged way of getting one.“We took advantage of having a crane at the zoo one day by dropping a couple of really big trees into the exhibit,”says Carpenter. “They completely stripped the bark off of both of the trees within two hours.”