Bears are highly intelligent, wide-ranging omnivores whose welfare in zoos depends on opportunities for foraging, denning, play and exploration. Enrichment design is central to their quality of life.
Bear welfare in zoos is heavily influenced by the richness of the foraging environment. Wild bears are opportunistic omnivores that spend much of their active time searching, smelling and manipulating food items — behaviours that are cognitively engaging and deeply motivated. Barren zoo enclosures that provide food in a bowl produce bored, frustrated bears who develop pacing circuits as a displacement behaviour. The contrast in welfare between bears in enriched naturalistic enclosures — with buried food, manipulable objects, water features and complex terrain — and those in traditional concrete paddocks is dramatic and well-documented. Hibernation management is also critical: bears that cannot establish appropriate torpor patterns in winter show disrupted physiology and behaviour.