ABSTRACT
The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is unique among the family Ursidae in that it is adapted to a semiaquatic lifestyle, spending as much as 50% of its life on ice floes and swimming up to 90 km (60 mi) between floes (see Stirling 2011 for thorough review of its natural history). As an Arctic species, the polar bear is extremely vulnerable to rapidly changing environmental conditions associated with the warming climate. It has become the poster child for climate change (a bear recently swam 687 kilometers between floes due to scarcity of ice; Durner et al. 2011), and thus, there are targeted studies ongoing to understand and document the impact of climate change on Arctic animal health. Such studies depend upon knowledge and understanding of an individual animal health and physiology, and interdisciplinary collaborations to link individual animal health changes to population demographic changes (e.g., see Hunter et al. 2011; Stirling and Derocher 2012; Rode et al. 2014; Wiig et al. 2015). This chapter focuses on medicine for individual bears in zoological collections and presents pertinent information on the biology, husbandry, physiology, and diseases of this unique animal.
