The Intelligence of Bears - Page: 2

Bears have a stereotyped image as big, clumsy and slow-moving. They aren't thought of as intelligent even though they can be readily trained to remarkable performances in the circus. Circus bears juggle, ride vehicles or roller skates, play sports (hockey and basketball), play musical instruments and in general perform routines of remarkable complexity. The only other land animals of comparable trainability are primates. In fact, bears are comparable in intelligence to the higher primates short of the great apes. In North America, bears have the largest and most convoluted brains relative to their size of any land mammal. They are considered by many wildlife biologists to be the most intelligent land animals of our continent.

Their intelligence reflects the fact that they are omnivores. Omnivores are often substantially smarter than their more specialised brethren. Consider, for example, raccoons and pigs. Omnivores have to remember much information about their varied food sources, and must be adaptable and flexible with their strategies for obtaining them. Bears are the greatest omnivores of all next to humans. Bears keep in their capacious memories a complete map of the vast territories they live in, comprehensive both as to place (the many places where various sorts of food can be obtained) and time (knowing in what seasons to obtain them). They pick up this knowledge in the extensive education they receive from their mothers (she'll give them a light, open-pawed smack on the side of the head to remind them to pay attention). Bears also constantly check out every little thing in their territories and take note of even the smallest details. They also have a keen sense of curiousity and are quite willing to explore new situations to see if they lead to new food oportunities.

Although wildlife biologists still haunted by the ghost of Skinnerian Behaviorism automatically deny bears any ability for abstract reasoning, it is obvious to those who have observed them that they can reason situations out and draw inferences from evidence, often in an eerily human-like fashion. Anyway who has looked into the eyes of bears in photographs (or real life) cannot help but notice the impression of shrewd intelligence and careful appraisal going on in the mind of the animal; the only other animals whose eyes create that same kind of impression are primates.

There are numerous anecdotes illustrating the deductive capability of bears. One of my favorites concerns a female grizzly who was part of a study. Two years previous to the incident, she had been captured with a cable snare around the foot and shot in the rump with a tranquilizer dart. When she was captured again after 2 years, she dug a hole just big enough to hold her big hairy behind and sat in it, waiting for the biologists. She obviously remembered what had happened the previous occasion. When she was shot in the neck instead, she gave the biologists a look of outrage before passing out. Other bears, especially grizzlies, have become rogues, killing vast numbers of livestock with impunity for years, defying the cleverest hunters and trappers to catch them. The cunning and shrewdness of such bears became legendery. The tradition continues to this day. For two years, biologists working near Glacier National Park were troubled with the antics of the Mud Creek Grizzly. He was a very handsome-looking dark-colored grizzly who had been captured at least twice in the course of wildlfe studies. He decided he had had enough and declared war on the bear biologists. He would invade a site after the bait and cameras were put up and the traps set. First, he would take down the plastic strips that marked the trail to the site. Then, he would set off all the traps using sticks and rocks, then steal and eat the bait. Afterwards, he would trash the site with that thoroughness for which pissed-off grizzlies are known for. He would go to great lengths to obtain the camera that the biologists had set up to record the capture. After getting it, he would gnaw on it until the back sprung open, then remove the film cartridge and smash it. How he knew that the film in the camera was important is beyond me. Despite this, the biologists were often still able to develop a few pictures in the damaged cartridge and thus obtain a good look at their opponent whom they never saw in the flesh. Various traps were set to catch the Mud Creek Griz, but they were disabled with contemptuous ease. Eventually, the biologists realised that on at least some occasions, the bear followed them out into the field and watched them from hiding as they set up their equipment, ready to trash it as soon as they left. The grizzly was never trapped, but moved on to another territory after losing a fight to a really big old male.

Black bears too show strong reasoning ability. The never-ending war in our national parks to keep them out of campers' goodies attests to this. The smartest bears are in Yosemite in California. Methods that work almost anywhere else are a waste of time here. They can get food hung up in a tree no matter how carefully it is done. Even supposedly "bear proof" containers are not in Yosemite. The bears there long ago figured out you could crack them open by taking them high in a tree and dropping them. The only thing they cannot do is open the steel lock-boxes that the rangers provide, and my informants tell me that the bears quite ignore food inside these. The are at their smartest in getting into vehicles. The rangers do their best to warn the public, but it is a waste of time. One man from Las Angeles watched in shock as a black bear carefully peeled down the rear side door of his Japanese car (preferred for their light construction), walked in, pulled down the back seat to get into the trunk, pulled out the ice chest, carefully opened the catch, and proceeded to chow down. He said the bear knew exactly what it was doing. Other bears have specialised in breaking and entering particular models of cars. One young male figured out you could open a tightly locked VW bug by hopping up and down on the roof until the air pressure blew out the doors. Another (in a different park) has discovered a fool-proof method of breaking into Ford vans. He goes to the upper left corner of the windshield, hooks in his claws, and pulls out the glass. He then ransacks the interior, opens up the back door and exits.

One researcher who has studied black bear intelligence thinks they are at least as intelligent as baboons. Some of the information I have encountered suggests a pretty high cognitive level. One of the most remarkable photos I have shows a black bear walking upright on hard-packed snow and holding a large stick. The bear is making big curlicues in the snow with the stick and examining his handiwork with intense concentration. Another example is from the National Zoo in Washington. A black bear there figured out how to escape from his enclosure. He was smart enough to keep it a secret. He would escape late at night after everybody left with his friend, an Indian sloth bear, and the two of them would tour the zoo, being careful to return to their enclosures before dawn. They kept this up for quite a while before the zookeepers got suspicious and caught them at it. Black bears show a distinct fascination with human artifacts. One informant told me that a local black bear likes to enter her Ford car if she leaves the window open and sit in the driver's seat with his paws on the wheel as if he were driving it. Another bear kept in a cage learned how to pick the lock by inserting his claw in the keyhole and adroitly manipulating the mechanism. Circus trainers consistently rate bears of all kinds as more intelligent than dogs, horses or the big cats.

We should remember that bears to a large extent occupy an ecological role in northern wilderness areas similar to ours. In colder climate areas, they are typically the dominant and most intelligent animals. In North America, this was especially true of grizzlies. None of the Native American tribes regarded themselves as superior to the big bears. In fact, in California, the grizzlies were in many ways dominant over the Indians, much to their sorrow and woe. Native peoples in the Northern Hemisphere, the inheritors of the PaleoArctic Tradition all have a profound regard for the bear, whether in primordial Europe, the vast forests and tundras of Asia or in the varied landscapes of North America. These peoples consistently regarded bears as spritually powerful beings of deep wisdom. They believed that great knowledge for survival could be obtained by carefully observing bears. In fact, any hunting and gathering tribe could learn the basics of survival from the bears. Almost certainly, the ancestors of the Eskimo learned how to survive in the Arctic from the polar bear. Probably, the earliest human tribes in the cold northern lands learned the basics for living there from the wolves (hunting) and the bears (gathering). Bears are masters of survival.