Bears are among the most welfare-challenging zoo animals due to their intelligence, wide-ranging nature, and strong motivation to forage. Stereotypic behaviour is common in poorly managed facilities.
Bear welfare in zoos is critically dependent on the quality of the foraging environment. Bears evolved to spend large portions of their time actively searching for diverse food sources — a behaviour pattern that cannot be satisfied by twice-daily feeding of a fixed diet regardless of the nutritional content. Scatter feeding, puzzle feeders, buried food, ice blocks with frozen fish, and varied novel food items address foraging motivation in ways that structured feeding cannot. Space is important, but quality of space — its topographic complexity, substrate variety, and enrichment density — matters more than raw area. Stereotypic behaviour once established is extremely difficult to eliminate even after environmental improvement, making prevention through quality housing from the outset the welfare priority.