Look at this poor polar bear mouthing “help me” from within its empty glass cage in the middle of a shopping center in Guangzhou, China. According to Animals Asia, this polar bear, along with other animals, are being held captive so people can take selfies with it and tap on its cage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrAvXmasxJI
Animal welfare activists sighed heavily when I told them it was just suffering from Pokémon Go withdrawal and instead have called for a boycott of the “world’s saddest zoo” citing things like “inadequate conditions” and “needs not being met.”
Animals Asia Animal Welfare Director Dave Neale said: “There is no excuse for any animal to be trapped this way but it’s widely believed that polar bears are one of the hardest of all animals to effectively provide for in captivity. Polar bears often exhibit ‘stereotypic’ behaviour as captivity restricts their natural instincts such as the need to forage.
“Polar bears require huge amounts of space. Large enough for them to walk, run, climb and hunt.
“The list of what they need is very long – to a point whereby you can only really answer that what a polar bear really ‘needs’ is to be free to live life in the wild.
“This bear has no peace and nothing natural to take comfort in. What’s more information on how best to try to meet the complex physical and behavioural needs of captive polar bears is freely available and yet this animal has been willfully incarcerated in this way.
We are calling on the Chinese public not to attend this attraction. We are calling for it to be closed down. This is a bear that suffers for what? For selfies? For shopping?”
Well, that’s a little alarmist. They act like that bone he’s laying next to isn’t enough or something. And do you see the vinyl decal they put on the wall? The one that looks like a desktop wallpaper from the 90s? I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what his natural habitat looks like. It even has the Aurora Borealis in the background. That or their printer malfunctioned.