shiggins wrote:
charleyharvey wrote:
The enclosure itself is pretty large, but most of it is taken up with a giant moat to protect visitors that takes up about 80 percent of the exhibit. The bears actually live on a tiny strip of rock or concrete behind the moat.

Is that to keep idiots from sticking their fingers through the cage at the bears?

Yeah. And to make it harder for the bears to get out. If they go into the moat there's no way out of it on the human side.

The elephants here had the same arrangement. I think it might be different now, but the elephants were (maybe still are, if they didn't change it) surrounded by a huge moat thing, which I always thought was weird because it seems to me that if one accidentally fell in it would seriously injure itself just from the force of falling, but ok...

Some of the big cats have the moat system (the lions and tigers) and some are behind thick Plexiglas (cougars), but most are behind chainlink with a barrier to keep people from reaching the fence.

image
"You gotta help us, Doc. We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas!"