Singapore Zoo Singapore Zoo

Polar Bear Shores at Sea World is one of the best polar bear exhibits I've seen anywhere in the world. It is large, naturally landscaped, and the bears have constant enrichment (both environmental and behavioural) that makes them active and interested in their surroundings all day. The off-limits facilities are equally large and impressive.

Without a doubt, it is one of the leading animal exhibits in the country. This is one of the reasons that Sea World are the only institution in the country that have been granted approval to import (and therefore display) polar bears by the Department of Environment and Heritage.

 

Yeah I know, its a vestigial exhibit left over from the 80s. But what's not shown in the photo is a fairly large, 4m deep pool. Behind the wall is the airconditioned den (off-exhibit) which the bears have access to at all times of the day, in addition to shading and misting fans outdoors.

Still, its not nearly quite large enough and being outdoors it can get rather hot. There was a plan to redevelop the exhibit some time back but the idea of phasing out polar bears was already being considered then so the managemnet flipped and flopped about the issue for some time before making a concrete decision in June this year.

here's another view of the exhibit from the service gangway. Visitors view the exhibit from below, via underwater glass panels. I feel its too small too. Sorry about the large size, don't know how to shrink the pic


Best polar bear exhibit in the world is probably Detroit Zoo's Arctic Ring of Life - also the world's largest polar bear exhibit. It features an underwater glass tunnel (like those you see in aquariums).

 

dung in artificial vine....when taronga created serpenteria back in the 90s it mixed animal dung in with the concrete for the artificial rocks to encourage the growth of moss. the same thing can be done in the garden at home, or by simply pouring watered-down milk over shaded, moist logs.

 

bear exhibits...

bears, regardless of the species, all seem to be particuarly prone to boredom in captivity. they are reasonably intellegent, often solitary and large omnivores - a combination that doesn't work too well in their favour in zoos. behavioural enrichment is often touted as a better alternative to space or an excuse for a lack thereof for most zoo species. personally, whilst i think it is very important, "enrichment" comes in a variety of forms and i feel space contsitutes one of these. space, is not only mentally enriching for animals, it also provides numerous physical and social benifits as well.

i'm not big on toys in exhibits, whilst i understand that they provide important entertainment for their owners, i feel they destroy any attempts with immersing a visitor into a natural landscape. it always dissapoints me to see the "feel" of a naturaistic multi-million dollar exhibit completely destroyed by some big plastic balls or cargo nets.

instead i think should you provide animals with much larger exhibits, multiple public viewing opportunities, inventive naturalistic play items and plenty of well designed and landscaped space - you'll find that the needs of the animal are met without compromising on visitor experiences or the immersion effect.

i think bears are better suited to large primate style exhibits than to big cat style exhibts (in which they are often displayed), some european and US zoos are starting to get the idea, moving bears from old hagenbeck grottoes into large open forested exhibits not unlike melbournes gorilla exhibit. bears love climbing and i think we often overdo the rock aspect and under-appreciate the importance of climbing trees (sun bears in particular are partially arboreal in habit)....

it would be nice if melbourne did some work to their bear exhibit - i think it needs a major extension and a second, shallower stream needs to be added to the bears can actually catch the fish that are released into the water.

that said, brown bears are being phased out in favour of sunbears and melbourne has no plans at present to hold them either so, i doubt very much that any major funds will be put into their nicely landscaped but nontheless small bear exhibit.

 

few points

totally agree pat, on toys in exhibits. now when zoo designers design, they do it with that in mind, i just finished an article about this exact topic, ruining exhibits with toys

points made

do it in process of designing, vines that release food rewards etc

discuise commercial toys, eg) lions play with tortises in wild- so a few paint balls etc

make the behind scences enriched as possible with commercial stuff, non immersion, climbing towers etc, as animals spend more time here than on exhibit 16 hrs a day often in holding yards and buildings.

as for bears

bears at taronga re 2 of the oldest in world, 2 sisters each about 29 there abouts, the male recentally died. the exhibit there is right next to the new asian exhibit, and leads to the extended asian area with snow leopards and pandas etc, as with lions and tigers. taronga will place there sun bears in here, which is quite a large exhibit for a city zoo like taronga. i would love to c taronga redo africa, and remove lions up to new africa, as to allow for 2 tiger exhibits and have that end of zoo completry asian, only non asian are meerkats, peccaries lions and fennec foxes.

if i find how i will place the naturalistic zoo enrichment doc on this site by Jon Coe

 

I do agree that brightly-coloured plastic toys are really distracting in a naturalistic habitat.

Here in Singapore, the keepers disguise enrichment devices to make them look as natural as possible. For example, stuffing food into a small opening of a hollowed-out coconut for the animals to pry open.

For nocturnal primates like the bushbaby and tarsier, mealworms are placed inside a section of bamboo, with tiny holes drilled into it. The worms periodically crawl out of the holes and so the primates are kept busy for a while. They also get to display natural hunting/stalking behaviour which is excellent for a captive context. Fishing cats, otters and polar bears get to hunt live fish.

Sometimes just placing food slightly out of reach will stimulate the animals to be more active. Bananas for the elephants are in feeders hung high in the trees, the elephants have to stretch their trunks to the limit to reach the food. For climbing species like primates and squirrels, food is scattered onto the trees and branches (pieces of fruit are staked to blunted screws drilled into branches while leaves/browse are hung high off the ground - our douc langurs have feeding stations almost 7metres above ground), encouraging the animals to climb and move rather than sit in one spot to eat.

 

Phase Out

Singapore Zoo has refined its collection plan to focus on smaller species.

Large ungulates are gradually being phased out. Its kinda sad but with a premium on space here, its better to concentrate on smaller species.

These species have been phased out in the past few years:
Bontebok, Blesbok, Gemsbok, Impala, Nile Lechwe, Barbary Sheep, Red Duiker,
Blackbuck

Species in the midst of being phased out (lone individuals left):
Greater Kudu, Eland, Nilghai, Blue Duiker

Species identified for phasing out:
Springbok, Thomson's Gazelle, Scimitar-horned Oryx, Polar Bear

As you can see, we've lost a lot of large charismatic hoofstock. But the phasing out of polar bear is for the better, and it really is a very welcome move.

 

Wouldn't it be great to get the hoofed stock that Singapore are phasing out into Australia!

There is a zoo, wildlife Park in Scotland that has an amazing bear exhibit. It seems to have been designed almost purley for the bears. It is several acres in size, has a large hill running though it ( the bears are forever going up or down, great exercise), there is a forest, running stream, with I beleive a native population of fish, lots of rocks and every morning keepers run through with blood etc to provide interesting things to do. It is I beleive hard for people to view the bears but they have found that as the bears can get away from viewers eyesight, they do spend a lot of time where they can be seen. The whole exhibit cannot be seen from any one viewing area.

 

Zooish, We take ALL those Antelope species, THANKS, hehe, It would be good if we could, wow.

 

i heard, get this, that a zoo in europe has asiastic black bears, mixed with camels, macaques, ostriches among antelopes. it sounds kool that all these animals can be mixed, note it is a 30 acres exhibit or so

 

I know of a zoo in the UK tahts mixes Hamadryas baboons with ungulates, Rhinos, Giraffe and Zebra, and yes it is owned by David Gill

 

lol, there is also one with babons and 4 female elephants

 

Given a large enough habitat, mixing baboons and ungulates should be fine, provided that areas where each species can retreat to escape harassment are available. Bears? i'm not so sure

It wasn't too long back, there was news about a rhesus macaque being killed by the sloth bear sharing its habitat, can't remember which zoo though..

One clumsy ibex in SIngapore once slipped off its enclosure's cliff and landed into the habitat of 70+ hamadryas baboons and the poor fella was chased and traumatised by the troop before keepers managed to move the baboons into the dens and rescued the fella.. Lol

Btw, i would love to give the ungulates to Oz zoos.. IF only i could

 

yea, just become boss, lol

 

Plans for a new Orang Utan exhibit are being finalised, with commencement of construction expected mid next year.

The new exhibit will feature 2 seperate islands, one for Borneans, the other for Sumatrans. Not sure if any other zoo currently displays orang utans in this fashion, but it will solve the problem of having to rotate our orangs on display.

The free-ranging orang display has been largely successful, with a couple of minor hiccups. Orangs are deviously smart and they learn to use sticks to break hot wires. So many more layers of wire have been added. There was one escapee, but the orang (young male) is used to people so he did not pose much threat. The keepers quickly coaxed him onto a buggy and moved him back into the den with very little fuss.

 

moats and monkeys....

it certainly is a very ambitous plan - free ranging orangutans!

i like the sound of the new exhibit design. i'm very fond of "island" primate exhibits since they are a very effective way of removing the need for un-natural barriers. the downside to water is that since most priates can't swim, there have been plenty of drownings over the years with this typw of barrier. recently a gorilla drowned in the US, i believe one of dubbos juvenile siamangs once fell into the water crossing from one island to the next and drowned and it happened at melbourne zoo with one of the mandrills.

however the risk can be greatly minimised by design and there are ways bridging the visitors to the island for an up-close experience.

 

most have some sort of eletric barrior as well, and around most moats now are cargo netting like set-ups for primates to hang on to,

i beleive dubo now has a few ropes, and also a large cargo net under the section of rope that moves the aniamls over the water, island to island

on mogo, there masterplan entails orangs on the island there with siamnags, but since siamangs are breeding so well, they prob wont. they have had 3 births in the 3 yrs they have been there, as well as the female is pregges again.

 

We've been using islands for primates from the very beginning and we literally swear by it! The only exception are proboscis monkeys, their habitat has to be netted because they're not only good swimmers but love to dive-bomb from trees as well. All other primates at the zoo either live on islands or free-range.

I don't believe we've had any drownings, with the exception of a chimpanzee that was darted while trying to escape. She fell into a water body and drowned unfortunately.

Many of our primate moats (including chimps and mandrills) have hot wire barriers along the edges of islands to prevent the animals from straying too near the edge. The exhibit side is usually gently sloped or built with a shallow bank.

Because we have so many orangs (27 at last count) the free-ranging areas were created as an add-on to their current island exhibit. The 2 free-ranging areas allow up to 10 orangs to be out at any time. The island houses another 10 or so, the remaining stay in their dens until they are rotated on exhibit. The new exhibit is supposed to be large enough so that ideally all the orang utans can be displayed rather than stay in their dens. The free-ranging areas will remain even after the new exhibit opens. This new exhibit has been in planning for several years, thwarted a couple of times by budget cuts and management change.

Its kind of frustrating though that we create so many free-ranging habitats, yet the average visitor fails to notice the animals! They can walk right under a tree with orang utans swinging above and not notice. I guess most people are too used to zoo animals being in clearly-defined enclosures.