A Formosan black bear’s habit of pawing at turtles and provoking other bears at the Taipei Zoo is causing headaches for zookeepers, they said last week.
Beary (貝兒), a 14-year-old female who is 1.6m tall when standing and weighs 100kg, has a “strong personality,” the zoo wrote in a social media post on Friday.
She has an obsession with red-eared sliders in her enclosure and likes to slap the turtles’ shells when she finds them during her exercise hours, the zoo said.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei Zoo
The behavior has prompted the turtles to flee into the enclosure’s artificial pond upon seeing Beary, but the black bear is often undeterred, it said.
A video released by the zoo on YouTube showed Beary wading into waist-deep water and searching the pond with her paws.
Beary is remarkably energetic and constantly engages in activity during her waking hours with little rest, the zoo said.
Black bears tend to have poor vision, which is probably why Beary was startled the first time she spotted a red-eared slider and backed away from it, an interaction the zoo recorded on video, it said.
She began to show an interest in the turtles a while after the encounter, which suggests she has a surprisingly good memory, it said.
Her restlessness can manifest in less benign ways, as Beary routinely provokes the bears in nearby enclosures, it said, adding that zookeepers have prevented fights by distracting the aggrieved parties with food.
Formosan black bears are solitary animals, and an average bear would claim a territory of 50km2 in the wild, the zoo said.
Beary’s temperament is at odds with Brown Sugar (黑糖), a 13-year-old male that is also in a public viewing enclosure, it said.
The much larger Brown Sugar — who stands 2.1m tall and weighs 100kg — enjoys resting in the shade after meals, and never bothers the turtles in his enclosure, the zoo said.
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