The amphitheatre where the daily feeding sessions take place in the Polar Bear Park in the Scandinavian Wildlife Park, Denmark. This is only a very small part of the enclosure.
August 2007
The amphitheatre where the daily feeding sessions take place in the Polar Bear Park in the Scandinavian Wildlife Park, Denmark. This is only a very small part of the enclosure.
August 2007
This park has been discussed on ZooChat before, and I think that the polar bear enclosure might be the second best in existence. It's still tough to beat the Detroit Zoo's "Arctic Ring of Life".
@Dan: I absolutely love the polar bear enclosure at the Scandinavian Wildlife Park, but while visiting the Detroit Zoo in July I was blown away by how active the bears were. The "taiga" area is large, full of grassy hills, rocky mounds and a large pool where 2 bears thrashed around for at least 20 minutes. The "sea" section is magnificent, as the underwater tunnel is brilliant for both bears and visitors. There were 2 more bears there, each observing the people beneath them but more importantly checking out the harbour seals in the next exhibit. The design of the habitat makes it seem as if the seals and polar bears are in the exact same pool, and the scent of the seals is fed through tiny holes in the acrylic surface. The bears would actually lunge at the seals, and that is an amazing action to watch from only a few feet away!
The last section of the exhibit is the "ice-pack" area, which is more of a traditional, solid surface for the bears to lounge on. Overall the area is 4.2 acres, but that includes the space for the arctic foxes and harbour seals as well as the bears. The entire complex is in my opinion the #2 best zoo exhibit in North America (after Congo Gorilla Forest) and a few months ago I uploaded loads of photos into the Detroit Zoo gallery. The only polar bear habitat that comes close to Detroit's is the Scandinavian Wildlife Park's paddock-style enclosure.
I was sort of semi-joking above... I am sure that the Detroit exhibit is absolutely brilliant! I have seen it on Zoolex and was already then struck by the wonderful idea to have the two species interact - and you describe just that so good! Also nice to hear that the bears get interested in the people in the tunnel. I believe that the design of the upcoming new polar bear exhibit at Copenhagen zoo - that Toddy has described in the forums - is very influenced by the Detroit exhibit.
