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

Stimulating olfactory and rubbing behaviour:• Different flavours (from drugstores or perfumeries) on the groundand on elevated structures to elicit sniffing behaviour.• Hides for rolling and rubbing.• Resin or spruce-needle oil on tree trunks and the ground elicitsrubbing.• Scent trails sometimes leading to concealed food items.6. Starting an enrichment programmeThe ideas and practical suggestions made above should be applied in sucha manner as to provide the bears with options for a sufficient variety ofactivities to enable them to carry out a broader range of naturalbehaviours. While many of the activities will, by necessity, be quitedifferent from those experienced by bears in the wild, the dailyprogramme should aim to keep the animals occupied as much as possible.Thus it should aim to provide the individual bear with:• Security from disturbance or harassment, in the form of nestingsites and means of avoiding threats from conspecifics; a goodrelationship with familiar, friendly keepers (of the utmostimportance if the animal is to feel relaxed and safe).• An environment which provides the kind of complexity(environmental diversity) to which the animal is naturally adapted,including such features as soft ground nesting sites for polar bears.• Opportunities for the animals to achieve simple goals with a reward,such as retrieving food from concealed pipes. This is often referredto as “control of the environment”. Given appropriate facilities,bears may create their own goals in play, for example, polar bearshave invented games involving stalking and pouncing on trafficcones, or bouncing a ball off a wall.• Unpredictability in the form of variations in the diet, novel objects,training to new tasks, novel arrangements of existing materials.It must be emphasized that environmental enrichment is more thanplacing a toy in a cage: it is a whole and varied programme designed togive animals variety and choice.What’s a polar bear doing in the tropics?80www.acres.org.sg