The seasonal nutritional physiology of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) under human care
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite the seasonal ecology of polar bears, zoos feed their captive bears a high-protein, high-calorie diet year-round. This approach to polar bear husbandry has been associated with poor welfare and death by liver/kidney disease. I assessed the effects of diet – calories and macronutrients – on the physiology and behaviour of 5 bears at The Toronto Zoo. Diet varied seasonally in caloric intake, and bears were fed a high-protein diet from January 2018 to February 2019, and a high-fat diet from January 2022 to June 2023. During both periods, the body mass and fat, blood chemistry, and body temperature of bears were recorded. Behavior was observed under the high-fat diet. Diet had significant effects on body and blood variables. Calories had significant effects on activity and body temperature, while macronutrients had no effect on these variables, suggesting thermal stress and laziness are not relevant welfare concerns for captive bears on this diet.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".