Sloth bears and honey badgers are mustelid relatives and Ursidae with highly active, solitary, and intelligent natures that make zoo welfare management particularly challenging.
Honey badger and sloth bear welfare present distinct challenges. Honey badgers are highly escape-motivated and will exhaust immense effort to breach enclosures, indicating severe frustration in typical zoo settings. Their intelligence requires complex, constantly changing cognitive enrichment to prevent boredom-related escape attempts and stereotypic behavior. Enclosure security must be extreme while still providing adequate space and complexity. Sloth bear welfare requires insectivore-appropriate enrichment including excavatable substrates with buried insects and simulated termite mounds. Both species suffer from understimulation and require exceptional enrichment investment to achieve adequate welfare.