I'm not a massive fan of this exhibit, but it's as good or better than hundreds of similar bear enclosures around the world. The amount of water in the habitat is definitely impressive!
It's a decent size, but it's just got too much rock and little or no enrichment. There's also four bears, which might be quite stressful for a solitary species.
And when I was there - some four or five years ago - there were more bears than that. My guess would be something like seven or eight...
Don't forget when this exhibit was build, I think it was 1967, a this time, this was one of the ebst and largest polar bear exhibit in the world ! In the ebst times, they had around 10 bears in that enclosure, but fortunately, these times are gone. Its out of time now, becuase the zoobiology runs very, very fast, so maybe the present huge and natuaralistic poalr bear exhibits are out of time in 15 years, maybe earlier... Nevertheless, Its necessary to build a new one, but it is NOT necessary, to keep polar bears in BOTH Berlin Zoos.....
Times change. Like Kolmården old Polar bear exbith. It was the world's biggest and best in the 1960s, but some years ago changed the Polar bears against Snowleopards, a unique change, I would say. The polar bear exbith did not qualify anymore, but was still one of the world's largest.
To be honest, they are both very similar. The one at the Zoo is bigger, but the Tierpark has more room for a larger exhibit, being surrounded by woodland. The spectacled bear enclosure at the Tierpark is awful. I'll dig out some photos. None of the 4 polars at the Zoo were showing any signs of repetitive behaviour when we visited (Sept 2007).
Three of the four were very stereotyped every time I visited (three times), the other was sleeping. Two were head weaving on the little island, and one was pacing a tight circle on the main "rock".
