Which animals pace at your zoo?

J

Jurek7

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
I wonder which animals in your zoo show pacing or other stereotypical behavior?

Zoos certainly did a good job in eliminating these. Not to say, that animal trotting around must always be unhappy. I must say, I don't remember seeing a monkey or an ape behaving abnormally since very long ago. The same with ungulates - except one camel from a herd.

But bears still pace. The same - strangely - with leopards. Also foxes. Maybe they are solitary species and even pair members want to get away?
 
The Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle is famous for its naturalistic exhibits, and the only animal that regularly paces is a sun bear in a fairly nice grotto enclosure. Each time I'm at the zoo I either don't see any sun bears at all, or there is one going back and forth eternally at the back of the exhibit. I've also seen an Asian elephant rocking side-to-side or going around in endless circles on a couple of occasions. It is madness to watch such actions, but overall pacing is not a problem at the zoo. However, I've been to many zoos in my life where the pacing is incessant and tough to watch, and where there have been a dozen animals in various cages going back and forth for probably the bulk of their lives.
 
At Cleveland Zoo our Persian Leopard Dara will pace a little in the afternoon when he is eager to go inside and get fed. It is nothing really major or incessant by any means just anticipatory. All the bears at Cleveland Zoo show horrible stereotypy and all of them pace for the bulk of the day. They all live in some of the tiniest grottos I have ever seen. The squirrel monkeys in the primate/cat house pace incessantly and it can be difficult to watch. One of our three elephants (when she lived here) showed rock behavior often and when I visited her down in Columbus she was rocking. Our snow leopards and cheetahs also pace often too, and overall I would say Cleveland has a lot of stereotypic animals.
 
Lanka the sloth bear at Whipsnade weaves a LOT. However this is due to her previous home, which I'm almost certain was in Poland. It shows that it's nothing to do with the enclosure at Whipsnade as the other two don't do it, I don't think they even.
 
At Marwell this is thankfully rare, though I have seen Gamin the Amur Tiger and Akin the Amur Leopard pacing. The anoas also pace occasionally, though their enclosure is too small in my opinion.
 
I've never been to a zoo where tigers don't pace, I think activity levels have a lot to do with it. Bears = Very active so they have a lot of time to fill, this time is often filled with pacing. Lions = Not active, most of time awake spent eating, hence less pacing.
 
Most big cats generally pace out of feeding anticipation. I haven't seen too much pacing with tigers, once at SDZ when the female Mek saw a keeper in the holding and occasionally at Cleveland Zoo the tigers will pace. It seems like jaguars pace a lot. In Miami the jaguars pace everyday from 3-5 as they are very eager to go in and get fed.
 
The Caracals are VERY pacey at Toronto, though I've seen them have their "down" moments too. I think it's because sometimes they're not allowed in their indoor holding. Sometimes I'll see Tonghua, the male Amur Tiger, pacing along the perimeter of the fenceline but other than that, I don't see too much pacing at this zoo.
 
I've seen plenty of animals pace. I don't think it shows the quality of the exhibit or species however; I've seen animals in great enclosure like Tiger Mountain at Bronx or the Elephants at Columbus pace and have seen ghastly exhibits where I have not seen pacing.
 
I've seen them pacing, every time I've seen it they've paced in circles.
 
There are very few stereotypical behaviours at my local zoo Auckland, I can think of three and two are quite unusual:

1). Kashin, the older of the two female elephants rocks and will stand with one of her feet in the air, the zoo thinks this is linked to the old elephant enclosure she lived in for the first twenty years of her life, they have tried to stop it and have been successful in reducing it some but I don't think they will ever be able to get her out of the habit unless they start stimulating her 20 hours a day..!

2). The zoo only has one Chimpanzee left, Janie, she is one of the old tea party chimps which showed so many weird behaviours... She always has a toy phone that she carries around between her left thigh and stomach, the zoo doesn't even try to stop this, in fact they recently gave her a new phone... She also lives in an old style bar and concrete enclosure, the tea party chimps couldn't handle an open naturalistic enclosure apparently...

3). Finally and this is the real strange one (I haven't heard of this before if anyone else has seen this please comment), one of the fur seals goes into an alcove in the faux rock in the seal tank and rolls ad nausem over and over against the wall (sideways)... Every time I've gone for the last ten or so visits he's in that spot rolling except for the two times I have gone and the zoo had either put a boat there and then a wooden pallet, to try and stop him I guess, but the last time he was rolling against the pallet that had been put there AND another one of the seals was copying him..? Weird, no..?
 
One of the sealions at Bristol swims in a loop in the pool, but I'm not sure if I've seen what you're talking about. Doesn't surprise me with the chimps not getting used to a natural exhibit though.
 
At Copenhagen Zoo, the only tendency to pacing I have observed would probably be in the leopard exhibit. Two adjoining netted enclosures, one of them perhaps 200 sq. meters big, the other one somewhat larger. Both opened to each other most of the time. Both pretty good furnished.

Also... maybe the old elephant male, Chiang Mai, could have been described as pacing in his old enclosure. Not seeing any signs of that in the new one (although I have heavily critizised that one here on ZooChat for a number of reasons).
 
At Toronto Zoo, soem more famous pacers in my memory are

The fur seals

Lazarus the canadian lynx

Rengat the sumatran tiger

and the polar bears (in there old exhibit)
 
At the LA zoo three animals pace from what I can remember. One of the black bears does it immediately after eating. The jaguar paces towards the end of the day since it knows that its time to go in. The fossas also pace at around noon, but I don't know the reason for this.

Since moving to his new portion of the exhibit, I have not seen Billy the elephant bob his head once.
 
Fossa are notorious for pacing although I havent witnessed too much in Belfast zoos pair!
 
A note dont big cats have territories that they sometimes go around to protect? So this could be natural or is it one side of the fence?

They could think the fencing is their territory so they pace along it and they might pace where the public can go.
 
Yes, I think you're right evilkitty. And Fossa are pretty prone to pacing, I've seen it go on in most places that house Fossa.
 
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