From the News: St. Louis Zoo Begins Construction of New Polar Bear Habitat

St. Louis Zoo Begins Construction of New Polar Bear Habitat

I'm going to gripe about polar bears for a moment.  No, that's not entirely right - I'm going to gripe about zoo polar bear exhibits for a moment.  Now, St. Louis is one of my favorite zoos in the world and possibly the greatest in the country (with Bronx, Brookfield, and a few other stiff competitors).  I've loved all of their recent exhibits and have no reason to doubt that this one will be excellent as well.  It's just that I've never seen an animal that has had its zoo exhibits botched so repeatedly as I have with polar bears.

Zoo design teams try to recreate the natural habitats of the animals displayed - savannahs, rainforests, coral reefs.  In the case of polar bears, this is, of course, the Arctic.  This in turn translate to concrete "ice" and a big pool.  It creates the picture-postcard that they're looking for - a white bear on a white or gray background, diving into a pool.  It's a hit with visitors, especially when underwater viewing is available.

The problems are twofold.  First, it's not an entirely accurate representation of polar bear life - besides pack ice, bears sometimes move south into the tundra, where they encounter grasslands and sometimes even trees.  Minor quibble.  The second problem is that "natural" (in the sense that concrete pack ice is natural) might not be what's best for the bear.  A zoo habitat is a super-condensed territory, which means that it has to be super-enriched.  If you air-lifted a perfect one-acre section of Arctic landscape (some how making it not melt) and transported it to the Lower 48, it would probably be pretty boring for the bears.  I once read an account of polar bears being introduced into the brown bear exhibit of one zoo, where they dug in the dirt, rooted around, and even climbed trees.  It might not be the image of the Arctic that zoo guests are expecting, but they could still see some pretty cools bears engaging in some pretty awesome behaviors.

They just might not be swimming as much as we're used to seeing...