When the mercury falls and temperatures dip below -30° Celsius, most people and animals included seek the warmer climate indoors.

Not so if you’re Baffin, as Thursday’s dipping degrees proved the perfect weather for the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo’s polar bear to take a polar plunge into the ice covered waters of the new polar bear habitat.

That reaction to cold weather is emblematic of how the zoo addresses the needs of their animals, by letting each—unless they are sick or face an age-related health challenge—choose to either be indoors or outdoors and to engage in as natural behaviour as possible.

“Our beautiful bears are really enjoying the water today. It doesn’t matter what the cold temperatures are, polar bears are going to polar bears, and I didn’t put any food or any reinforcements or anything in the pool to encourage them,” said Jax Hoggard, supervisor of Wild Canada at the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo.

Other behaviours, she said, are dependant on what part of the world a species comes from, and even individual tolerance for the cold.

“We have a lot of cold tolerant animals like our Amir Tigers, and our markhors, and snow leopards. They all live in a very similar climate to what we have in Canada, especially in the Wild Canada zone,” Hoggard said.

Other species, said Hoggard, like the red pandas, also thrive in snowy cold weather.

Food, sleep and choice

Part of preparing animals safely for the coldest times of the year for the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, often starts with what the animals themselves do best: Eat and sleep.

The polar bears themselves were on a double diet to build up reserves for the cold weather, and to ensure that they felt satiated.

“First and foremost, we make sure that everybody is adequately fed. They have an appropriate diet all year round to make sure that their body can allow them to pack on the pounds and do what their bodies are supposed to naturally do at a safe rate. Of course, we don’t want them to thick or too heavy because that can have its own challenges,” Hoggard said.

“Then, choice and control. We’re making sure that they can choose where they want to go, they can choose to go to shelter points, they can choose to go to a bed, or they can choose to not go into a bed. They have a variety of different options for bedding, housing, shelter, and excellent diets for the animals.”

She said that staff are always monitoring the health of the various species under care, and that none of the species are ever locked out during the day from their indoor spaces—also endeavouring not to lock in animals either based on temperatures.

“We just give them access to holding spaces so they can again choose to go wherever they want. Every species has a different temperature parameter that we have to make sure that we’re watching the temperatures constantly we look at the daily temperatures, the overnight temperatures, but again, it completely depends on the species,” Hoggard said.

Overall, said Hoggard, most of the animals act a lot like how people want to act in cold weather.

“They want to do what we want to do: they want to sit on the couch, they want to bundle up, and they want to just kind of stay in one spot. The big behaviour change that you might see is that the animals are less so running around and playing, with the exception of the polar bears, and much more likely to be bedded down and hunkering down for the day.”

Penguin walk set to return for 2024, weather dependant

One of the favourite activities for both visitors and one particular cold weather species is set to start on January 15.

The annual launch of the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo’s penguin walks is set to begin at 10:30 a.m., weather dependant. The walks only occur when there is a lack of wind, and the temperature is between 5° Celsius and -25° Celsius.

“Yes, they are from the Falkland Islands and they can handle extremely cold temperatures, but if they don’t have to, you don’t want to force it,” said Hoggard.