Samenvatting

Despite the polar bears’ long history of high popularity in zoo settings, many studies indicate that this wide-ranging species expresses many abnormal repetitive behaviours in captivity, such as stereotypic walking, head swinging and repetitive swimming bouts. This is also the case in the male polar bear Victor of Ouwehands Zoo who expresses different stereotypic behaviours depending on the exhibit he is in. Is the cause of the stereotypies expressed by the male polar bear motivational frustration-related? Correlations between Victor’s stereotypic behaviour and external factors within the Ouwehands Zoo setting are investigated.