Abnormal Behaviours in Two Captive Brown Bear ( Ursus arctos Linnaeus, 1758) Females: Individual Differences and Seasonal Variations

Abstract

Abnormal behaviours are common in captive environments that not supply the physical and psychological needs of animals. There are animals, like brown bears, more susceptible to develop abnormal behaviours due to their seasonal biology related to food, hibernation or reproduction. The two brown bear Ursus arctos females from Barcelona Zoo, Spain, showed two different patterns of abnormal behaviours. The old ♀ displayed episodes of biting a tree trunk while the young ♀ carried out headtossing events. The studied period was from March to December 2004 divided into seasonal periods: autumn, spring and summer. A total of 63 hours of observations were recorded using a multi-focal continuous method. The time invested on abnormal behaviour was higher in spring followed by summer and autumn in both females. The other variables related to the abnormal behaviour studied were duration, intensity, occurrence and space use which also showed statistically significant differences among seasonal periods. The old ♀ space use during abnormal behaviour was in the same zone meanwhile the young ♀ showed statistically significant differences among seasonal variations and zones of the enclosure. These results should be taken into account to improve the management of bears in zoological institutions.

Conservation, animal behaviour, and human-animal relationship in zoos. Why is animal welfare so important?

“…Of particular concern are the relatively high prevalence and rates of stereotypic behaviour shown by zoo elephants (e.g., swaying, weaving, pacing [Mason and Veasey 2010]), felids [Quirke et al 2012;Vaz et al 2017], primates [Pomerantz et al 2012], bears [Soriano et al 2017], polar bears (Ursus maritimus) [Shepherdson et al 2013]) found 85% of bears in their study performed the behaviour and it used up an average of 11% of the activity budget, and minks (Polanco et al 2018), among others. Broom (1983) suggested that it is unacceptable for any animal to spend more than 10% of the waking day displaying abnormal behaviours.…”

The Benefit of Enrichment Application on Animals in Captivity

“…Changes in the behavior of captive animals when the natural environment is not available, or not similar such as in nature, were examined from 4 articles [4] [16][18] [19].…”

“…Dental health can be disturbed due to the appearance of caries. Especially for animals that have a habit in cleaning their teeth with bone or wood [4] [19]. Stress level are caused by increased glucocorticoid hormone secretion in the blood.…”

“…The issue that usually arise on animals in captivity is appearance of stress [3]. Triggers of stress are caused by the captive environment not supplied with physical and psychological need of animals due to them still able to do psychomotor activities [4]. Signs of animals on experiencing stress can be seen from the changes of their behavior and in their feces and blood will found level of cortisol [1] [5][6].…”