(Animals at Play from Speaking of Faith on Vimeo.)

I've been wondering a lot lately about inter-species relations -- partly as a result of watching my dog Ace and the horses at the ranch in Montana at which we were staying, partly because I just finished reading Life of Pi, Yann Martel's wondrous and fanciful novel about a man, a lifeboat and a tiger, and a zebra, and an orangutan, and a hyena, and lots of meerkats.

What would happen if you put a Polar bear and a husky together? Probably not always what's depicted in this slideshow -- but that fact that it did this once is amazing enough for me.

The photos were taken by famed German wildlife photographer Norbert Rosing, who once spent three years photographing Yellowstone National Park. He has worked since 1988 on capturing the essence of the Polar bear in photographs, and his photos from the ongoing project have been published in several magazines worldwide, including National Geographic.

In this slide show, part of a story for American Public Radio's "Speaking of Faith," Stuart Brown, a physician and clinical researcher who founded the National Institute for Play (really, there is such a place) describes Rosing's striking images of a wild polar bear playing with sled dogs in the wilds of Canada's Hudson Bay.

(Click the arrow at the bottom left of the video image to make it work, or, if you prefer, to make it play.)

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Tonight, at the Mount Washington Tavern, BARCS (Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter) will hold its first Celebrity Guest Bartending Fundraiser, from 6 p.m. until closing time. Celebrities pourers will include Duff Goldman and Mary Alice Yeskey from the Food Network's Ace of Cakes, Maynard from "The Ed Norris Show" on WHFS, Justin Berk, Denise Dory and Jamie Costello from WMAR, Patrice Harris from Fox 45 and Joy Freeman from Baltimore Dog Magazine.