Polar Bears at the Zoo

John Griswold
6 min readFeb 10, 2019
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

In the early ’90s zookeepers were becoming increasingly aware that their Polar Bears were suffering psychologically. Despite the fact that the bears had pools in which to swim, rocks to bask on or climb, and regular nutritious meals, the bears spent a lot of time in repetitive and seemingly obsessive behaviors, swimming endless figure eights, pacing in precise patterns, or obsessively grooming themselves to the point of baldness.

One hypothesis that zoologists developed was that polar bears are highly intelligent problem solvers, adapted to thrive in a large and complex range, an environment that zoo enclosures couldn’t come close to duplicating. Providing for most of the bear’s physical needs just short circuited their psychic drive to use their wits and memory, their physical prowess to solve these survival challenges on their own. Given their tremendous energy and motivation, having these needs provided for just left them bored and fretful. They became anxious, and developed self comforting behaviors.

The presence of mental and physical challenges in their lives had proven to be a cryptic feature of their selective environment, one to which they were elegantly adapted. Many selective features in animal environments are obvious, as are the adaptations that animal populations use to deal with these features. Polar bears live on the ice, they have developed brilliant white coats…

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John Griswold

Master carpenter, watercolor artist and beat up old jock…owned by Black Lab Bo who considers two tennis balls a minimum mouthful