Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
For example, one scientist who closely studied captive black bears says that they manipulate various
objects, such as blocks, chains, and other playthings, at about the same level as chimpanzees. This
would seem to indicate a substantial degree of curiosity about their surroundings.
Bears can also be remarkably creative about figuring out how to get at food. One park biologist told
me about the case of a tightrope-walking black bear. In order to keep bears out of their food, campers
in the park suspended their edibles in containers hung from a quarter-inch cable strung between trees.
Park personnel were polite but privately disbelieving when campers came to them and said that they
had seen a bear tightrope-walking the cable in order to reach the food containers. Skepticism turned
to belief, however, when the campers returned with photographs of the bear caught in the act! In yet
another instance, biologists observed a small bear standing on the back of a large bear in order to reach
a sack of food suspended from a cable.
Pennsylvania biologist Gary Alt, who is one of the leading authorities on black bears, has witnessed
some rather astonishing performances on their part. He has done a great deal of work live-trapping
bears to weigh, tag, and radio-collar them. A suitably large trap, made from a section of culvert, has
a piece of bait suspended toward the rear of the trap. When a bear enters and seizes the bait, a raised,
hinged gate is released; this falls, latches securely, and imprisons the bear. Alt has known some bears,
after being trapped only once,
to return and stand with one hind foot raised while they take the bait,
thereby preventing the falling gate from latching. Then the bears, bait and all, simply back out of the
trap. If this isn't intelligence, it's at least remarkably rapid learning!
Alt also relates the astonishing tale of a 560-pound male bear that seemed to vanish into thin air.
When Alt tracked this bear in the snow, he suddenly came to the end of its trail, with nothing around
to climb or hide in. The first time this happened, he was understandably baffled by such an eerie sight,
but he managed to solve the riddle after careful inspection of the tracks.
Without turning its hind feet, the bear twisted its body to the rear, jumped, and landed precisely in
its own footsteps. Then, carefully stepping only in the tracks on its back trail, it traveled for a short dis-
tance before leaping off at right angles to the trail. Only by noticing that the tracks had claw marks at
both ends was Alt able to figure out what the bear had done. What's more, Alt tracked the bear twenty-
six times in two days, and the bear repeated this amazing trick every single time, backtracking with
exquisite care from fifty feet to two hundred yards before leaping sideways off the trail!
Although intelligence is an extraordinarily difficult and contentious subject, it would appear, based
on these and similar incidents, that black bears exhibit a great deal of behavior that most people would
regard as intelligent. In other words, the black bear probably
is
the brightest bear in the woods.
THE BROWN BEAR
Any consideration of North American brown bears must take into account the major differences
between two very distinctive segments of this species— the inland grizzly and the coastal brown bear.
