Polar bears are incredibly adapted for an aquatic lifestyle.
In fact, their paws are actually partially wet to
help them swim and these guys can swim across 30
to 60 miles of open ocean with really no problem
. They spend so much time in the ocean that
they're actually classified as a marine mammal. And their
Latin name Ursus Marius literally means sea bear. We
give them live fish. So that way they do
have an opportunity to hunt. The bears responded greatly
to the fish today. In fact, as soon
as we let them out into their exhibit, the
bears hit the water and they were out there fishing
. So that's really cool because out in the wild
, polar bears don't necessarily hunt live fish. So
it's something that they have to identify. And also
they have to come up with ways to be able
to hunt them in this cool setting. So each
polar bear has their own technique when it comes to
hunting fish here in their exhibit. Tati is our
most playful bear here and that transitions over nicely to
hunting. And she's got a pretty cool and pretty
smart technique when it comes to catching these fish,
she likes to corral them into the shallow end where
they're a lot easier to catch. She'll also utilize
the corners of the exhibit because she knows once she
has them corralled into an area where they can't escape
, it's much easier for her to catch them.
And that's something that she's figured out completely on her
own passing or hiding your food is a very important
part of being a bear because if you catch an
animal, but you can't eat it all. Well
, you don't want somebody else to steal your food
. So the bears will actually go and utilize the
snow to hide the fish after they catch them so
that they can come back to them later. Their
rescue cubs that were orphaned out in the wild.
So the fact that they can utilize these types of
natural behaviors is incredibly important to stimulate people. We're
able to give them a number of different environmental resources
and some of these things are daily. For instance
, this is one of the only places in San
Diego where it snows every day. Our bears always
have access to snow and that's something that we're able
to provide them here at the zoo. Also the
water, we keep their water temperature control. It's
about 55 degrees throughout the year so that our bears
remain comfortable. Also a lot of different natural things
such as substrates, plants, grasses, there are
a lot of different things in this exhibit that are
all meant to help them keep them psychologically stimulated and
engage with their environment.