ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The life of one of the most remote grizzly bear populations in the world is being documented by the animals themselves, with collar cameras that provide a rare glimpse of how they survive on Alaska’s rugged and desolate North Slope.

Twelve of the 200 or so grizzlies that roam the frigid, treeless terrain near the Arctic Ocean have been outfitted with the cameras as part of a research project by Washington State University and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The videos they record — many partially obscured by the undersides of whiskery muzzles — show the bears playing or fighting with companions, gnawing on a caribou, snarfing up berries, napping on a beach, and swimming in a pond looking for fish.

Packing on pounds

The bears hibernate about eight months of the year.

“They really have a really short window to obtain enough food resources to pack on enough fat to survive that period,” said Washington State doctoral student Ellery Vincent, who is leading the project with state wildlife biologist Jordan Pruszenski.

“We’re interested in looking at kind of a broad scale of how they’re obtaining the food that allows them to survive through the year and what exactly they’re choosing to eat,” Vincent said.

Among other things, the state is interested in learning to what extent the bears hunt musk oxen. There are about 300 of the shaggy ice-age survivors on the North Slope, according to Pruszenski, but the population is not flourishing.

Short clips, deep insight

The cameras can record up to 17 hours of video. In the spring and summer, they took a short video clip — four to six seconds — every 10 minutes. In the fall, due to the encroaching darkness, they recorded clips every five minutes during daylight.

Despite their brevity, the clips provide a rare perspective of how the bears thrive on the desolate North Slope, an area that covers about 94,000 square miles but is home to only about 11,000 people. Nearly half of the residents live in Utqiagvik, the nation’s most northern community, formerly known as Barrow.

The study will continue for another two years, with plans to add collars to 24 more bears.