Yes 6 species. This grotto is about the size of the jaguar exhibit at the Miami Zoo. All the circle grottos are under 2000 square feet, but they are well-furnished. They are still too small and the indoor holdings are some of the smallest in the world with 5 by 5 holding cages, not to mention downright dangerous for the keepers. You NEVER want to work this area with another keeper, one mistake by the other keeper and your dead.
In these exhibits I have seen some crazy stereotypic behavior. Our male Sloth Bear is almost always pacing neurotically back and forth. Many of the bears up here get so entranced in their pacing that they have fallen into the moats.
Yikes, they fall into the moats? With such a great collection, it would be interesting to see if a shared bear run area could be created for rotation somewhere.
These ancient grottoes are so small that often bears can walk from one side of their entire existence to the other in about 10 seconds. I always see either sleeping or pacing bears in grottoes, but the female grizzly named "Shadow" at the Greater Vancouver Zoo has a 1.5 acre, naturalistic exhibit all to herself and in almost 25 visits to the zoo in 2009 I have not ever seen any kind of stereotypy from her. The grizzlies at Northwest Trek, Woodland Park and Minnesota, ALL in awesome exhibits, also show ZERO effects of stereotypy. Then I visit a zoo with a damn bear pit and I see a sleeping bruin or a pacing, insane creature.
I was there in 2003. Then I think the grottos were almost bare. Even if they are just as small as back then, at least they have added some substrate and logs and such.
