What's a Polar Bear Doing in the Tropics? - Animal Concerns ...

Feeding methodsThe feeding methods apparently used by the zoo may not be in the bestinterests of the polar bears.In the wild, polar bears are active hunters and forage feeders. They arecontinually searching for opportunities to hunt seals, walruses and to findsupplementary food sources such as carrion. Some populations are alsoknown to eat berries, eggs and kelp during the times they inhabit terrestrialenvironments, such as boreal forest, tundra and coastline.In a captive situation, it is not practical to provide polar bears with seals orwalruses to hunt. However, there are certain feeding methods that aregenerally recognised to be the most beneficial to their welfare.International bear husbandry standards (e.g., EEP, AZA) emphasize theimportance of feeding bears at least three times during the day. 8 In captivesituations it seems that bears benefit if their food expectations are metpromptly, as early in the morning as possible, to alleviate the stressassociated with the anticipation of food. 36 Random scatter feeding andmodification of feeding techniques may prove beneficial for polar bears. 38According to the zoo keepers at Singapore Zoo, the polar bears are fed theirmain meal in the evening inside the indoor cages. This method of feedingone main meal a day in the evening may lead to stress, as the bears areanticipating their food all day. This also constitutes a predictable, dullfeeding routine. As a result, the amount of time spent feeding is likely to beshort, offers few challenges and requires little, if any, foraging effort.The Polar Bear Protection Act, Manitoba, requires that those keeping polarbears must ensure that the regular feeding schedule is supplemented byirregularly timed and located feedings involving foods not normally served. 11The recommendations by the various zoo associations and animal welfaregroups are in general agreement about the importance of using a variety ofmethods of food delivery (Appendix VII). Feeding methods that allow forextensive foraging, natural manipulation, and processing including scatterfeeding, hiding food and burying food in soft substrates are widelyrecommended. Some of the guidelines suggest giving the bears some of theirfood at irregular times of the day. The UFAW and WSPA guidelines bothrecommend feeding the main meal early in the morning. Some guidelinessuggest that polar bears benefit from food that floats.During the course of this study there was little evidence of any scatterfeeding or any other type of feeding enrichment methods being employed inthe outdoor enclosure. There did not appear to be anywhere in the outdoorenclosure where food could be hidden or buried to make feeding times moreWhat’s a polar bear doing in the tropics?65www.acres.org.sg