does anyone knopw of any zoo that has had really good breeding sucesses with their bears? what species? And what seems to be the recipe for sucessfully breeding bears?
In the case of Brown Bears, American/Asian black Bears and partly, Sloth Bears, the "recipe" is simply: put at least a male and a female bear together that at least tolerate each other, seperate the female after several matings, and presto! You have bear cubs. A "great" example: Bear Country, USA... Sun and Polar Bears are a bit more tricky-even though sometimes averse husbandry conditions seem to result in more successful births and young rearing than "perfect" ones (Tierpark Berlin, Sun Bears...). All in all, the "recipe", if something like this exists at all, are bears liking each other and apt conditions, favouring successful reproduction-which also includes a good zoo staff.
The San Diego Zoo has bred sun bears in the past.... In Australia there has not been any bear births as of late....the only polar bears in Australia are at Sea World.... The sun bears in Adelaide Zoo were rescued from a restaurant in Cambodia and they all display stereotypical pacing behavior even though they have a well planted and well designed exhibit to explore.....
The problem is not with the breeding of bears but the space required. There are numerous collections around the world which have historically and currently very good records of breeding certain species. The biggest difficulty has usually been where to house offspring. And bears live for a long period of time ~30 years. That is a long-term commitment. Species go in and out of fashion too. Sun bears are the rage in Australasia, but only two collections have bred them. While there are very few sun bears in the UK, Spectacled bears have become popular. New polar bear exhibits are popping all over America. Sloth, Asiatic black and Eurasian brown bears are the subject of several animal charities' efforts (eg WSPA) to rehouse orphans/poorly housed/ex-pets into large naturalistic pens. While in the past (up until late 70s in modern zoos) collections kept numerous species of bear, most modern zoos are lucky to keep one species.
i think alot of zoos still don't want to touch bears for fear of protesters and activists, but where zoos have the space, time and money i say why not, they can then start to establish rarities like sloth bears within zoos and give all bears the attention they deserve
Bears arent really all that controversial (like apes, elephants, and cetaceans). However, like tetrapod mentioned, there became a big surplus issue with offspring because bears adapted well to captivity and have long life spans. Zoos reached a peak in their populations and have stopped breeding. Now, at least in North America, we have a very geriatric collection of bears. The AZA Bear TAG no longer reccommends breeding brown and black bears because of the large number of non-releaseable native bears that can be acquired. And foreign bears species are more threatened than our own. There is a huge peak in new bear (not just polar, but all species!) exhibits. As the demand grows, I think we will all see a healthy increase in breeding activity in at least the North American zoos.
Brown, asian and american black bears bred extremely well in zoos and even cages and circuses. Sloth, polar and sun were more difficult, that is not regularly bred in small cages and paddocks. In 1950s-1980s many zoos had several bear species and many bred 10s or over 100 bears over the years. Since about 1980s zoos became worried about stereotyping and generally poor states of enclosures and stopped breeding. New bear enclosures are being build, and hopefully bears will become common. But bears will never be able to breed to their "full capacity", there is no space for that.
i'm really suprised that bears would breed in circues and cages, i didn't think bear would breed if they showed stereotypical behaviour
If the conditions are right animals will breed anywhere,many times animals have been moved to what we think is a better enclosure and they stopped breeding in the new enclosure,but when in the old one they didn`t stop breeding.
stereotyped behaviour isn't really linked to breeding performance, in many cases animals which show even bad stereotyping will still breed.
Anyone have a date for the first breeding of brown bears in the UK? Whipsnade was the first place I'm aware of that bred them regularly.
My simple view is that bears that are not threatened in the wild, should not be breeded (Spelling? Is it in fact called "bread" or "bred" or something?) at all at zoos. It is a sad story with all the "new cubs of the season", press releases, naming competitions etc - and then they are killed a year or two after. I am very uncomfortable with the idea of "surplus animals". To my knowledge, all bear species live solitarily in the wild so there is no neccessary reason at all to mix males with females in zoos. Of course, I have the same view on all non-threatened species kept at zoos.
What are you suggesting Dan? That Zoo's breed there bears for publicity then kill them later on? If all places that kept wild animal's stuck to studbook recomendations then there should be place availble for new cubs. But unfortunitely so places play by their own rules.
Don´t you know, Taun, that this is a fairly usual practise in zoos? Not just with bears. This goes on with other species, as well. I am sure that the professional zoo keepers, of which there must be a few on this forum, will confirm my statement?
Know I didn't and still find this quite hard to believe in this day and age! Am sure there prob has been a couple of cases but this cannot happen in every zoo because they would all get shut down.
Well, I have read about this so many times that I have, so to speak, gotten used to the fact and therefore it is not possible for me to supply you with specific internet links and such. But, really, think about it....... some species seem to be very easily bred in captivity, even though the circumstances might be horrible. Let´s take european brown bears or lions as examples. Basically every zoo holding these species every year advertize "the new cubs" and make a big fuzz about it. Where are all these cubs couple of years later? Remember, for instance, that half of them are males............. Again, I would welcome input from zoo professionals on this matter. Also, since I am new to this forum, maybe I should emphasize that I don´t totally subscribe to animal rights activist´s views on zoos, but I respect them and I hope that it will be possible for me to sometimes raise critical views on the subjects that we discuss on this forum.
Sorry dan but from what i`ve seen of some of your other posts on zoobeat i would say you have quite a strong leaning to the zoo anti brigade,i would like to see you name the collections that you say have abused Elephants using free contact method of keeping because i`m not aware of any in the U.K or Europe,i do know in the past some have been mis-treated in circuses but not within the last 20 years.
