Primate or Bear?

By Wai Pak Ng
 
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It was a rainy afternoon. David, Daniel and I were waiting our bear house for the rain to stop so that we could go out for lunch. The waiting gave us more opportunity to observe the bears and film this video clip.
 
Sun bear is the most arboreal bear species. In this clips, you will see how well our rescued sun bears climbed and at the same time play fight with others. They are good on balancing themselves on the thin branches! As indicated by the title of this video, "Primate or Bear?" they really look a lot like primates who adapt an arboreal lifestyle!
 
There are four bears in this video: Keningau, Tokob, Susie and Manis. We call this group as the adult female group. They live together in the four connected bear dens in our new bear house. However, it is common to see them all gather in one den playing and socializing, just like what you see in this video.
 
We are so glad to see them living together in a harmony way. In the wild, sun bear live a solitary lifestyle because of food difficult to find, thus competitions among bears are always high. However, finding food is not an issue for these bears under our care. We learn that they are actually quite social and like to interact with each other. We found out that they are less stress after spending more time interacting with each other. Manis used to have very bad pacing behavior by pacing in a circle and Takob used to be aggressive to people and easily became stressful. Both of them show a great improvement in their behavior: Manis hardly pace in circle and Takob is less aggressive compare to the time when they were kept alone.
 
We are still fixing the damage fence in our forest enclosures. We really hope the fence will be ready soon so that they can enjoy the forest enclosure again.
 
Primate or Bear? What do you think?
 
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