Playful behaviour or stereotypy? November 2009.

Not sure what to think about this. At one of my visits to the polar bear exhibit this day, the female was standing at the bottom of the pit, jumping rather frantically up and down at the visitors looking down on her. The visitors were excited, laughed out loud and almost queued up to take their turns at capturing it with their cell phone cameras safely and perfectly vertically positioned about two meters higher than she could reach with her head and paws. The behaviour went on for at least 10 minutes.

My two pictures here does not document it very well.

That is, unfortunately, stereotypy. The female came to Copenhagen in 2005 from somewhere in Italy (don't know exactly where) and was already stereotypic when she arrived here. She used to jump up and down by the wall in the watermoat until the zoo stopped her by putting a single line of electrical fence a meter above the water.

It seems that she has now started doing it in the dry moat instead...

Thanks for commenting, Toddy. I would spontaneously lean towards your explanation but then, filed under "Research" at the zoo´s website, there is a short report explaing a suspected "stereotypy" by her not to be a stereotypy. It is not expained in detail but I am guessing it has to do with what we are discussing here.

Link to the short report (in Danish):

Tidsbudget og arealudnyttelse hos isbjørn

Key words being (again in Danish): "... leg rettet mod publikum og ikke var nogen stressbetonet adfærd..."

My attempt at translation into English:

"... was playful behaviour directed towards audience, not stereoptypy...".