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[Dwerf]

Right, so some elves stopped by and I couldn't help but noticing they had a giant female grizzly bear for sale. Obviously, I bought it because its awesome... duh, but uhhhhh, how do I take care of it exactly? It is tamed and still caged, but how can I use it? I am completely new to animals so please explain it as such. That being said can I get a brief rundown on...

1) How do I feed it, does it need to be let out of the cage, does it need to... graze or something? Or does it need goblins fed to it?
2) How do I get it out of the cage?
3) Will it stay trained?
4) Assuming I can get a male, how does one get it to breed?
5) Is it safe around dwarfs? Does it need a special pen? Is it safe underground (I assume not, visitors keep bringing animals down to starve in my tavern)?
6) How can I use this for the defense of my fort and/or conquer the world with giant bears?

tl;dr: Impulse bought a giant bear, I am a dummy, please help.

[Ant]

1+2) Dwarves should keep it fed if it isn't a [GRAZER], which grizzly isn't. You can release it by choosing (b)uild-cage(j), slapping it down somewhere, and attaching it to a lever (3 mechanisms), after which you can assign it to a dwarf or put it to a pasture (i-draw fitting pasture-n-use shift+n- search freed bear and press enter).
3) caravan brought animals are perma-trained so no problem there
4) putting them to same pasture somewhat close proximity from each other? This I am unsure of, there has been some changes I've glazed over since my last more active times.
5) yes, no, and yes. Visitor's animals are, if I am guessing right, guinea pigs and rabbits and somesuch small herbivores? They won't be fed by dwarves, and thus tend to starve when their party animal owners get to year long hammertime in your tavern.
6) I've never used animals much for other than part of operation Delay the Clown Parade in which they are woefully underpar. One could, perhaps, use them as gladiatorial animals vs captured and disarmed and/or unarmored goblins/elves/humans, or as bottom layer of drop trap, or just assign them to soldiers as pets, so that they wade into combat with them and go to raids with them. Notable thing is also that giant grizzlies are frigging huge, so in emergency they yield a metric f-ton of meat and bones. Not to be used willy nilly, since they grow relatively slow.
 

[Ziusudra]

Some clarifications
1) Tamed animals that are not [GRAZER] do not need to be fed. (Taming any animal requires some food for them, but animals from trades are always fully tame.)
2) You could also just designate a pasture and assign it to that.
3) Any fully tamed animals will stay that way.
4) The wiki states: When a compatible male and an uncaged female of the same species are on adjacent tiles, they'll breed when idle.
6) Giant grizzlies can be war trained. Designate an animal training zone and make a sure a dwarf has the animal training job active, then go into the z screen, animals screen, select the grizzly and designate it for war training. Once the training is complete, assign the grizzly to a soldier with v-on-dwarf, p, a. Note that grizzlies and giant grizzlies hav the [MEANDERER] tag so they will probably lag behind soldiers when moving.

The animal training zone can overlap the pasture you assign the animal to. This should keep the animal there so the trainer doesn't hav to go get it and take there.

[PatrikLundell]

In fact, you can have your pasture being an animal training zone as well, so there's no need for overlapping zones.

[anewaname]

You have the right intent, and with many giant grizzly bears you can take over the world, but you need patience...

Patience!

Patience!

Do not rush to pasture the treasured beast near the fort entrance as a guard. You should sacrifice lesser animals and military dwarfs first, so those elves can bring it a partner and you can breed them until you have over a hundred.

You should also double-check your gate system, so you can protect your fort in case of danger before the bear-bomb has been prepared.

[Thisfox]

As has been said, she doesn't need feeding, and making a {i}zone setting up both {t}raining and pe{n} and assigning her to it (you use {N}) is easy enough. You can war train her in the animals tab in the {z} list, same as a dog, if she's got access to a training area. She is an excellent purchase and you should be very proud of yourself. Honestly, the reason I'm a fan of elves is the animals they bring.

I tend to have pens of dogs around my fort entrance, overlapping it, so that nothing can get in without the dogs noticing. This does lead to slow wardog attrition, but less werewolves jumping us unexpectedly. You could alternatively put her in a pen in the stairwell, so anything hard enough to get through the outer defenses meets her next and becomes bear food. Not, as I have said, that she actually needs feeding, but it's fun to do so. I had chained big cats all the way down my stairwell at one point... Better than statues, and hilaroius when there was a forgotten beast attack.... hmm. Perhaps you had to be there...

The elves will continue to sell you stuff each year. If you can get a male giant grizzly from them, then it's bear cub breeding season bonanza! Every dorf can have a warbear to love them and keep them safe and eat their enemies for them!

[Uthimienure]

2.  Another way is build the cage with "b, j", then after it's done, "q" the cage and assign no animals to it, then a dwerf will come let it out.

[Garfunkel]

You should also buy black bears if the elves bring them. You cannot train them for war the way you can grizzly bears but they can be put on leashes and will spot & scare off thieves and maul ambushers. I have animals on 3 layers in my current fort: outer layer has war dogs as dogs breed fast, the middle layer has both types of bears, and the inner layer has big cats and giant bears as I don't yet have a breeding program for them. You don't even need to restrict them - make the pastures big enough and it's only occasionally that dwarves will have to haul them back.

Note that if you only use a single animal trainer, that dwarf will eventually have a whole swarm of animals following them. My primary animal trainer has four dogs and two bears following him everywhere, which only causes trouble when he's building a wall and the animals get in the way.