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Post by warsaw on Jun 21, 2012 13:35:01 GMT -9
"...Then we got into the meat of the issues, such as the differences in the attack and feeding methods of the bear, coyote, wolf, and cougar. The presenters also discussed how the location the carcass is found in relates to predator type. These were just some of the investigative points that the COs wanted to bring to our attention. The morning started with bears—both grizzlies and black bears. The presenting described grizzlies as thinkers, compared to black bears, which are more opportunistic and reactive to their surroundings. He related a story about a grizzly that systemically wore down the battery at a garbage dump in northern BC by laying his shoulder into the fence, draining the battery to exhaustion, and then climbing over it. These are extremely fast, powerful, and nocturnal omnivores with an ability to detect scent that is equal to, or better than, that of dogs. According to the COs’ statistics, a black bear’s order of preference for livestock, from most preferred to least, are cattle, sheep, goats, poultry, swine, and finally, household pets. Horses are usually only attacked by grizzly bears. The key identifier of a bear attack is often a large bite or crush wound, somewhere along the thoraco-lumbar spine, as the bear attacks from the hind end and grabs on, working its way cranially. Another telltale sign of a bear feeding on live-stock is what looks like a de-gloving injury on the limbs. The CO also described bear attacks as inef -ficient, with livestock often having severe wound -ing prior to death. They described carcasses with crushed vertebrae, which made me think twice about walking alone in the woods! Bears will often drag their carcasses to a covered area and then semi-bury their kill, allowing it to rot..." canadianveterinarians.net/Documents/Resources/Files/2420_WestCoastVetMagazine_March%202012.pdf.
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Post by grrraaahhh on Jun 22, 2012 9:14:45 GMT -9
AbstractStudies of bear cognition are notably missing from the comparative record despite bears' large relative brain size and interesting status as generalist carnivores facing complex foraging challenges, but lacking complex social structures. We investigated the numerical abilities of three American black bears, Ursus Americanus, by presenting discrimination tasks on a touch-screen computer. One bear chose the larger of two arrays of dot stimuli, while two bears chose the smaller array of dots. On some trials, the relative number of dots was congruent with the relative total area of the two arrays. On other trials, number of dots was incongruent with area. All of the bears were above chance on trials of both types with static dots. Despite encountering greater difficulty with dots that moved within the arrays, one bear was able to discriminate numerically larger arrays of moving dots, and a subset of moving dots from within the larger array, even when area and number were incongruent. Thus, although the bears used area as a cue to guide their responses, they were also able to use number as a cue. The pattern of performance was similar to that found previously with monkeys, and suggests that bears may also show other forms of sophisticated quantitative abilities. Jennifer Vonk, Michael J. Beran, Bears ‘count’ too: quantity estimation and comparison in black bears, Ursus americanus, Animal Behaviour, Volume 84, Issue 1, July 2012, Pages 231-238, ISSN 0003-3472. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347212002126Also... From BBC NEWS, "Black bears show counting skills on computers": "People don't generally understand them to be as intelligent as they probably are," said Jennifer Vonk, the researcher who led the study. Although bears have the largest relative brain size of any carnivore, their cognition is not well understood. [......] For more, read here: www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18447587
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Post by warsaw on Jun 23, 2012 5:42:10 GMT -9
AbstractStudies of bear cognition are notably missing from the comparative record despite bears' large relative brain size and interesting status as generalist carnivores facing complex foraging challenges, but lacking complex social structures. We investigated the numerical abilities of three American black bears, Ursus Americanus, by presenting discrimination tasks on a touch-screen computer. One bear chose the larger of two arrays of dot stimuli, while two bears chose the smaller array of dots. On some trials, the relative number of dots was congruent with the relative total area of the two arrays. On other trials, number of dots was incongruent with area. All of the bears were above chance on trials of both types with static dots. Despite encountering greater difficulty with dots that moved within the arrays, one bear was able to discriminate numerically larger arrays of moving dots, and a subset of moving dots from within the larger array, even when area and number were incongruent. Thus, although the bears used area as a cue to guide their responses, they were also able to use number as a cue. The pattern of performance was similar to that found previously with monkeys, and suggests that bears may also show other forms of sophisticated quantitative abilities. Jennifer Vonk, Michael J. Beran, Bears ‘count’ too: quantity estimation and comparison in black bears, Ursus americanus, Animal Behaviour, Volume 84, Issue 1, July 2012, Pages 231-238, ISSN 0003-3472. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347212002126Also... From BBC NEWS, "Black bears show counting skills on computers": "People don't generally understand them to be as intelligent as they probably are," said Jennifer Vonk, the researcher who led the study. Although bears have the largest relative brain size of any carnivore, their cognition is not well understood. [......] For more, read here: www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18447587 Yes, I'm sure that Brown and Black are both very intelligent bears: Brown/Black adapt rapidly to new food sources AND "Black bears are well suited to life in a changing environment dominated by humans" "...Cubs, as well as older bears, engage in social play and have ritualistic mechanisms to meet strangers and decide if they are friendly or not. Bears routinely distinguish between threatening and non-threatening human behaviour. The same bear that casually empties your birdfeeder while you watch from the window also successfully evades human predators during hunting season. This requires an extremely high level of intelligence..." www.bearsmart.com/resources/north-american-bears/general-characteristics
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Post by warsaw on Aug 21, 2012 11:32:02 GMT -9
In addition, some of the bears learned rapidly and showed positive transfer with intermediate level discrimination, which were also learned rapidly by orang-utan subjects (Vonk & MacDonald 2004), but not by a gorilla (Vonk & MacDonald 2002). Intermediate-level concepts correspond to the basic basic-level concepts acquired first by young human children (Rosch et al. 1976). In showing that bears are able to form concepts that cannot be acquired solely on the basis of readily perceivable perceptual features, we have demonstrated the capacity for abstract representation, which has not previously been determined for this species, or for other species in this order. Although the bears, on average, required more trials to reach criterion than did a gorilla and orang-utans tested previously (Vonk & MacDonald 2002, 2004), they acquired the discriminations more rapidly than chimpanzees tested on the exact same discriminations with the exact same procedure (J. Vonk, S. E. Jett & K. W. Mosteller, unpublished data). While the bears on average required 22-33 sessions to reach criterion on the training sets across the different tasks, the chimpanzees required, on average, 35-75 sessions to reach the same criterion. While the orang-utans and the gorilla received 10 trials within a session (thus fewer sessions to criterion also means many fewer trials to criterion), the bears and chimpanzees received 20-trial sessions. Also of note is the fact that the orang-utans and the gorilla were required to meet a criterion of only two consecutive sessions at 80% (8/10 correct choices) before moving on to a novel set of images, while the bears and chimpanzees were required to meet a more stringent criterion of four consecutive sessions at 80% correct (16/20), or an average of 87.5% correct across four consecutive sessions, or 90% correct for two consecutive sessions. Had the less stringent criterion been adopted here as well, both bears and chimpanzees would have required fewer sessions to reach criterion. However, it is possible that differences in the procedures resulted in better opportunity to acquire and generalize the concepts being tested for the bears and chimpanzees. Indeed, changes from the original procedure were implemented in order to be more certain of concept acquisition prior to presenting transfer, and to increase the likelihood of forming a generalizable concept. All species were tested on a similar schedule receiving 4-16 sessions per day, 2 or 3 days per week over a period of several years. On the critical measure of concept transfer, the bears’ performance once criteria had been established was comparable to that of the apes at each level of abstraction. Although there were differences in training that may have affected acquisition of the concepts between (1) the orangutans and the gorilla and (2) the bears and the chimpanzees, it is less likely that such differences affected generalization of the concepts. That these bears showed transfer comparable to apes tested previously (Vonk & MacDonald 2002, 2004; J. Vonk, S. E. Jett & K. W. Mosteller, unpublished data) suggests that phylogenetic relatedness to humans and group living are not the only routes to the capacity for abstraction. Of course, other factors, such as physically challenging environments, most likely play a role in complex cognition (Milton 1981, 1988; Emery & Clayton 2004), but few nonsocial species have been tested in comparable tasks to evaluate these hypotheses. From: Vonk, J., et al., Concept formation in American black bears, Ursus americanus, Animal Behaviour (2012), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.07.020 shaggygod.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=americanus&action=display&thread=81&page=2
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Post by sarus on Sept 7, 2012 8:41:01 GMT -9
¨Use of Tools by Polar BearsAccording to Wikipedia: Tools are used by some animals to perform simple tasks such as the acquisition of food, grooming, or for recreation. postimage.org/image/b2pj2rji3/__________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ Animated gif created from this video: www.macvideo.tv/camera-technology/interviews/?articleId=115654__________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ .
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Post by sarus on Sept 7, 2012 9:03:11 GMT -9
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Post by sarus on Sept 7, 2012 9:57:17 GMT -9
´Use of Tools by Polar Bears_________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ Ian Stirling dismisses such accounts as "myths", as we can see here: Myths and MisconceptionsUse of tools - Polar bears do not use tools, including blocks of ice, to kill their prey. Scientist Ian Stirling believes that this idea may have come about because, after failing to catch a seal, a frustrated and angry polar bear may kick the snow, slap the ground—or hurl chunks of ice. _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ Myths and Misconceptionswww.polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/bear-essentials-polar-style/myths-and-misconceptions_________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ .
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Post by Ursus arctos on Nov 7, 2012 20:06:06 GMT -9
In a face-to-face confrontation over fish, both bears would flatten their ears and roar (Head-low Threat; EGHERTSTOKES & 1974) or raise their upper bodies and roar (Head-high Threat; EGBERT STOKES & 1974). When the bear with the fish roared, it dropped the fish. SJ would immediately pull the fish towards her with her paw and pick it up. Then SJ would trot away carrying the fish. Only SJ seemed to recognize that roaring, a natural threat response, made a bear lose control of a fish. SJ was also the only bear that broke off a high-intensity aggressive display in the middle and immediately returned to an inexpressive, pedestrian stance enabling her to pick up the fish that the other bear had dropped. Bears other than SJ also gained fish in confrontations involving roaring, but our impression was that only SJ used the opportunity that roaring presented to seize fish.
From: Fagen, R., Fagen, J., 1996. Individual Distinctiveness in Brown Bears, Ursus arctos L. Ethology 102, 212-226.
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Post by warsaw on Dec 2, 2012 9:57:54 GMT -9
WSU research seeks to 'enrich' lives of bruins news.wsu.edu/Content/Photos/2012/wsu%20news%20june/grizzlies%20come%20to%20play%20ss%2006-12-12/600_450/grizzlies__6_2012.jpgPULLMAN, Wash. - A young woman sporting a blond ponytail and dark sunglasses raises a flash card before a 500-pound male grizzly bear. The creature, with its blocky-shaped head and large back hump, responds by sitting up on his fire hydrant-sized hind legs. But instead of baring his teeth and swiping at her with his massive paw, he reaches out and swats the flash card. "Most grizzlies are right-handed, just like humans," the woman comments, while removing the card from the chain-linked fence that separates her from North America's biggest and most formidable predator. Next she inserts an apple slice through an opening in the fence. The grizzly devours it in a single swallow. It's as if he came to play. Second nature At Washington State University’s Bear Research Center, doctoral student Heidi Keen closely interacts with eight furry research subjects too dangerous to handle in the wild. Using tools such as flash cards, orange construction cones and cow hides, she is analyzing not only how the bears interact with her but how much they enjoy the human-made stimulation. Her unusual work offers a magnified look at "animal enrichment,” developed by zoo-keepers during the 1970s to help captive animals lead happy, healthy lives. Instead of just observing and recording the behavior, Keen is probing the "why” of the behavior. "I like to compare it to going to a job and getting a paycheck. At first the work is novel and fun. But after a while, do you go only because of the paycheck or also because you enjoy the work?” said Keen, now in her third year of enriching the world of grizzlies at WSU. Before grizzlies, she worked as an animal trainer and presenter of parrots, white-nosed coatis and Asian-crested porcupines at the Phoenix Zoo. "Ideally, enrichment ensures that zoo animals have plenty of positive stimulation, mentally and physically,” said Keen. The stimulation can be sensory-based, dietary or social, and it needs to engage the animal for an extended period of time, she said. Critics have long assumed that animals are empty of emotions and dismissed examples of animal intelligence as circus tricks. But each time a skeptic draws a line, animals cross it. Dolphins recognize themselves in mirrors. Parrots can count. Rats laugh. Grizzly bears, WSU researchers have found, are predominantly right-handed and can close gates. They even perk up when they spot familiar scientists’ cars pulling into the parking lot. Bruins and the scientist Six mornings a week in spring and summer, rulers of the wild kingdom are subjected to Keen’s research tools, ranging from gray flash cards, playthings, apple slices and honey water. Her field research is overseen by a "bear advisor.” And talk about a captive audience – wide-eyed members of the public press against a chain-link fence to watch. What seems the stuff of storybooks is actually cutting-edge research, said WSU veterinary cardiologist Lynne Nelson, AKA bear advisor. "It’s eye-opening from the standpoint that Heidi has developed tests to determine the bears’ basic emotions in relation to their environment,” explained Nelson, assistant director of the bear research center. The center was started in 1986 to protect grizzlies in the wild, and now is working to improve their lives in zoos as well. "Since we can’t peer into bears’ minds, and since they can’t tell us what they’re feeling, we have to design tests that measure responses, and that’s what Heidi has done,” she said. Smart, colorful bears An empty beer keg that energizes a grizzly bear might be ho-hum to a penguin, so enrichment programs must be tailored to each species, said Keen. Think: Bamboo toys for pandas, hay-filled burlap sacks for tigers, corkscrew water slides for penguins. So, amid random grunts and roars, Keen studies the species, Ursus arctos horribilis – six females and two males -- with names ranging from John to Frank, Oakley and Luna. Each grizzly brims with personality and smarts, said Keen. For example, Luna zips through her enrichment tasks, "expecting us to keep up with her rather than letting us set the pace,” she said. Oakley, the smallest, is calm and demure during testing but stands her ground among the double-her-size males. Frank protects his cowhide research tool, sitting on it and even covering it with grass to keep his bear-mates from snatching it, said Keen. And the reason Keen wears sunglasses? Months into her research, she realized that each time she held up a flash card to John, he studied her face instead of the card, presumably to read her facial cues on how he should respond, she said. "They amaze and amuse me almost every day.” Eventually, Keen hopes her research will provide humans with a better understanding of how to enrich the lives of not only WSU’s grizzly bears, but captive animals everywhere, she said. "We want them to feel like they live more as they would in the wild. We owe it to them.” And perhaps, by blending empathy for animals with science, we are more human in the deepest sense of the word. news.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=31936
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Post by warsaw on Dec 20, 2012 4:19:30 GMT -9
This bear has learned how to open vehicle doors using the handle, just like any person would. Luckily he hasn't caused any damage. But that's not always the case. Bears can cause extensive damage
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Post by warsaw on Dec 27, 2012 10:07:27 GMT -9
AbstractStudies of bear cognition are notably missing from the comparative record despite bears' large relative brain size and interesting status as generalist carnivores facing complex foraging challenges, but lacking complex social structures. We investigated the numerical abilities of three American black bears, Ursus Americanus, by presenting discrimination tasks on a touch-screen computer. One bear chose the larger of two arrays of dot stimuli, while two bears chose the smaller array of dots. On some trials, the relative number of dots was congruent with the relative total area of the two arrays. On other trials, number of dots was incongruent with area. All of the bears were above chance on trials of both types with static dots. Despite encountering greater difficulty with dots that moved within the arrays, one bear was able to discriminate numerically larger arrays of moving dots, and a subset of moving dots from within the larger array, even when area and number were incongruent. Thus, although the bears used area as a cue to guide their responses, they were also able to use number as a cue. The pattern of performance was similar to that found previously with monkeys, and suggests that bears may also show other forms of sophisticated quantitative abilities. Jennifer Vonk, Michael J. Beran, Bears ‘count’ too: quantity estimation and comparison in black bears, Ursus americanus, Animal Behaviour, Volume 84, Issue 1, July 2012, Pages 231-238, ISSN 0003-3472. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347212002126Also... From BBC NEWS, "Black bears show counting skills on computers": "People don't generally understand them to be as intelligent as they probably are," said Jennifer Vonk, the researcher who led the study. Although bears have the largest relative brain size of any carnivore, their cognition is not well understood. [......] For more, read here: www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18447587 Paws for thought: black bears know how to count, scientists say It looks like brown-coated Yogi Bear had it wrong: it's the black bear — one of Canada's most familiar and wide-ranging carnivores — that appears to be smarter than the average bear. A Canadian psychologist specializing in animal behaviour has found the first evidence that black bears have a counting ability comparable to that exhibited by some primates. The discovery by Pembroke, Ont.-born research scientist Jennifer Vonk suggests the tree-climbing, garbage-loving animal that inhabits every province and territory in Canada except P.E.I. has an "ancient" knack for numbers, probably reflecting its relatively large brain size and shared evolutionary roots with fellow mammals like us. "Our results are among the first to show that bears, an understudied species in comparative psychology and biology, may have evolved cognitive mechanisms equivalent to their distant primate relatives," conclude Vonk and U.S. co-author Michael Beran, an animal cognition specialist from Georgia State University, in a study published in the June issue of the journal Animal Behaviour. Vonk is a graduate of McMaster, Wilfrid Laurier and York universities in Ontario, and is now a psychology professor at Michigan's Oakland University. She told Postmedia News on Tuesday that her study of bear intelligence grew out of a primate research project at a zoo in Mobile, Alabama. "I was working with a chimpanzee," recalls Vonk, who was assessing the animal's cognitive abilities using a touch-screen computer monitor and recording its responses to simple tests. She got to know three black bears living in the same facility — siblings named Bella, Brutus and Dusty, all born at the zoo — and wondered whether the bears would use a touch-screen. Vonk said she was aware that bears are intelligent and "easy to train" — think Moscow circus bears juggling with their feet, or the Canadian cottage-country variety that learn to pry open trash bins of every description. But scientifically speaking, "we know almost nothing about bear cognition," she said. She received permission to set up her waterproof, specially-reinforced test monitor against the bear enclosure's chain-link fence, then began teaching the trio that certain responses to the images appearing on the screen would win small food rewards. Vonk coached the bears to "lick or touch their noses" to the screen to prevent their sharp-clawed paws from "scratching it to shreds." And gradually they learned — led by the best counter, Brutus — to reliably select one picture of a square over another square based on the number of coloured dots each contained. "We were kind of excited," said Vonk, noting that such behaviour had not previously been documented among bear species. Social animals, such as dogs or primates, are considered more likely to have "numerosity" skills because they rely on keeping tabs on their fellow group members for survival, said Vonk. But her new study — titled Bears 'count' too: quantity estimation and comparison in black bears, ursus Americanus — raises many questions about such undiscovered skills in other species, she added. Vonk said the project also breaks new ground in being the first scientific study in which bears have used touch-screen computers. "They seemed to really enjoy the stimulation," said Vonk, although she acknowledged that they might have been equally attracted "by the treats" — something Yogi Bear, the cartoon bruin famous for stealing campers' picnic baskets at "Jellystone" park, could understand.
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Post by Ursus arctos on Dec 29, 2012 11:17:38 GMT -9
Quoting the book "Learning to Talk Bear" by Roland Cheek: "The moon was full but fitful, sneaking only occasional winks through scudding clouds. Even when shafts of light took a swift swipe across the land, they barely reached into the forest depths where the grizzly moved as stealthily as a house cat approaching a weed-patch mouse.
The bear paused to test the night air with his nostrils, then drifted into a leafy alder copse where he stood motionless for several minutes while studying the dim outline of the cabin and its woodshed beyond. Even to Homo sapiens' relatively insensitive nose, the foul odor was pungent. To the great bear, the smell of rotted meat was most pleasant-what one might call "bearable."
Again the bruin moved. This time moonbeams stole through the clouds to shower the animal's rippling silver fur with a thousand points of light as he slipped boldly through the old cabin's tiny clearing. He paused one last time in the shadow of a bushy spruce to again survey the target.
The rotted deer carcass lay in a pile of jumbled, decaying logs left from long-ago days when the homesteader first wielded his axe. The carcass would be easy to take: simply move to the opening, reach in, and snake it out; then carry it a safe distance for a leisurely meal. Nothing could be simpler, and he was hungry. He took a steop forward. Moonlight filtered to kiss is massive head as he swung to peer behind, at the cabin. Another step.
The bruin stopped abruptly and sprawled to his belly, laying his dish-faced head atop his forepaws. There the bear lay for two hours with only his surprisingly tiny black eyes moving. The rotted deer carcass lay but four feet away. Just a few inches from the razor claws of the grizzly's forefeet, the snare cable's loop lay covered with leaves and forest duff, ready to snap shut at the first rustle of the rotting meat.
One other thing moved in the clearing that night-a tiny electronic pulse in the collar band around the bear's neck.
~~~
The man snapped the radio receiver to off and land the antenna in the pickup box. He grinned at his companion. "He's down. That makes two hours and he hasn't moved. We've got the Giefer Griz at last!"
High-fiving each other, the two game wardens leaped into the pickup with the Montana Department of Fish, WIldlife & Parks logo on the door, and sped away. The logo had a grizzly head pictured in its center.
"I don't believe this," the first warden said, minutes later.
"What'd he do? Just lay there and look at it?" the second trapper mused.
The bait and snare were just as they'd been left by the trappers. The only sign a bear had ever been in the vicinity was a patch of flattened grass as big as the bed of a black angus cow-and it only inches from their cable snare.
The veteran warden grinned. "No way out of it-you got to hand it to him. He's one sun-of-a-bitch bear."
The receiver picked up no radio signals from nearby, so the wardens returned to the high point they'd occupied earlier and tried again. Still nothing. "He's out of range," the elder warden said. "He's already out of range. We'll have to start all over again."
Three nights later, the big grizzly again eyes the secluded cabin from the darkened forest. A soft rain fell. Ignoring the pungent aroma wafting from the deer carcass, the bear walked directly to the vacant cabin and smashed the door from its hinges.
~~~
The Giefer (pronounced "guy-fir") Grizzly first came to the attention of Montana Fish & Game wardens in the spring of 1975 when he developed a propensity to break and enter summer homes in the Giefer Creek area along U.S. 2, near the Continental Divide summit at Marias Pass.
There was nothing particularly notably about the animal that wardens captured in a baited culvert trap set near the ravaged Giefer Creek cabin. He wasn't unusually large for a ten-year old male; there were no detectable injuries, and he appeared to be in good health. Neither did he act especially aggressive.
A year or two before, the bear's pilfering ways would have consigned him to the ash heap of history. But grizzly bears' recent listing as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act provided a second chance for the bear. He was moved a hundred and thrity road miles to the Flathead's South Fork and dropped off near the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
Nothing is known of the Giefer Grizzly until the following spring, when he again showed up at the doorstep of summer homes along Giefer Creek. As before, the bear wasn't constrained to mere doorstep observation. He was trapped again, this time with a cable snare before a baited cubby set. Again he was paroled, this time to the Flathead's North Fork. One of the terms of this second reprieve was that the annoying bear was fitted with a radio-transmitting collar.
It was the last time marveling researchers, frustrated wardens, blood-eyed home owners, and wannabe hbear huggers dripping with charity would get a clear look at the animal who revised standards for demolishing rural cabins. Before he was through, the Giefer Griz punched out windows and doors in more than a hundred clandestine entries into remote North Fork cabins. Some he penetrated as many as four times despite beefed-up doors and shuttered windows. No matter the double-locks and dead-bolts. No matter the barbed wire twisted in strands as thick as a child's wrist crisscrossed windows to hold him out. No matter that thirty-penny spikes was driven through planks and anchored atop porch floors and entry steps to deter him. The bruin simply ripped out a new opening.
Yet no one saw him. Some said they did. Some even said they got off a shot at the marauder. Some said they'd killed him. Or they knew positively of someone who'd killed this infamous Ursus arctos horribilis. Then another cabin would be opened like a canned ham, and speculation burst anew.
Newspapers got into the act, feeding the rumor mills with editorials about the bear's demise, suggesting it was a good thing, too, and that the Powers-That-Be should never again release "problem" bears into civilized society.
And then the Giefer Griz would strike again.
The truth is, the bear was never loosed into civilization to begin with; he was first dropped into the Flathead's remote South Fork, then released for his second chance amid the wild Tuchuck drainage, near Canada and the summit of the Whitefish Range.
But the bear must have tracked the Fish & Game truck to easier pickings because, before the week was out, he'd struck his first cabin and before another week was out he'd left busted doors, strewn furniture, and broken glass in a dozen more.
Before the month was out, the Giefer Grizzly was a legend in a land of legendary ursids. And before winter hibernation, the bruin was listed as "Public Enemy Number One" in area newspapers. Jokes were made about the Governor declaring the North Fork a disaster area, qualifying it for emergency relief from Washington, D.C.
Federal relief was already on hand in the form of professional government hunters, called in with the express purpose of applying capital punishment to a single bear. Kill bears they certainly did. But not the right bear. Not the Giefer bear. While hunters pursued him in te northern portion of his range, he practiced rural rehab in the south end portion. WHen they moved south, he moved north. There were times when he seemed to be working both ends the same night.
Odds are good that the Giefer grizzly was credited with more breakings and enterings than he actually accomplished-sort of the way Jesse James was held responsible for a train robbery in Arizona Territory and a New Hampshire bank holdup during the same week.
On the other hand, Jesse did travel to Northfield, Minnesota, and the Giefer Griz did roam at will up and down the North Fork while wardens and professional hunters and biologists circled in light planes and pickup trucks and talked back and forth on their two-way radios.
Unlike Jessie, the Giefer Griz had a sanctuary of sorts across the North Fork of The Flathead river in Glacier Park. He he kept his nose clean while in the Park, he could thumb it at trappers and hunters and wardens and maybe even biologists. But Glacier was not where the cabins were. And cabins were like a narcotic to the footloose bear. There was this thing about Canada, too. Dance across some imaginary line, and pickup trucks and professional hunters stopped as if the same road the bear had just ambled along fell off the end of the earth.
All in all, it was great sport. Despite white hunters and red-faced wardens and black-bearded biologists, despite steel-jawed traps and cable snares and enticing road-killed deer, despite the latest in electronic communications and media attention that reached to Reader's Digest, despite newspaper editorials and drunken wakes celebrating his supposed demise, the great bear shuffled blithely on from cabin to cabin.
Then came his lucky break, or-sas some say-his canny insistence on a level playing field. Just as the chase narrowed, the Giefer Griz left his collar lying amid the wreckage of his umptillionth cabin. Without a radio beacon around the bear's neck to prove them wrong, the rumor mills were free to embellish their wildest dreams: A logger ran over the Giefer Griz with his pickup truck. No, a rancher shot it inside a hay barn. No, the government boys quietly handled the creature's demise so as to suffer no further embarrassment. No, he's on his way back to the Middle Fork. No he's in Northfield, Minnesota, or New Hampshure or Arizona Territory.
Same bear, another cabin. And another.
Some second-home owners gave up and left their cabin doors smashed open, their windows broken. They removed all foodstuffs to their first homes in California or Helena or Puget Sound and resigned themselves to abandoning the field to the victor.
It was not so easy for those whose cabins weren't their second home but their first, their only home. To them, their single refuge lay in turning their cabins into occupied fortresses. There was little visiting between neighbors and trips to town put off until there was no other way. ANd after a rapid transit to a supermarket, they raged upon returning to trashed cabins.
Finally, in November, relief came with hibernation. Most of the winter was spent reinforcing their buildings or planning a counterattack come spring.
With spring came yet another report on the demise of the Giefer Griz. There are those among us without isolated cabins in the rural North Fork who had become skeptical of the Giefer's death-it'd happened so many times. But this time it was true.
The bear who had learned to avoid traps with the uncanny verve of Willie Sutton sidestepping First National's burglar alarms, and who had never-ever-ransacked an occupied cabin, had not recognized the peril of a distant hunter's magnum rifle.
To the north, some Canadian provinces permit a spring grizzly-bear season.
British Columbia is one. It is not known where the Giefer Grizzly took his winter sleep, but he grazed greening shoots along British Columbia's remote Wigwam River on April 27, 1977. He was killed from one hundred and fifty yards by a Pennsylvania hunter guided by a Cranbrook, B.C., outfitter.
The Giefer's career was like that of a brilliant shooting star blazing across the sky briefly, then fading to nothing in the atmosphere or crashing ungainly to earth. Though the bear bore press scrutiny for two of his twelve years, he really occupied newspaper headlines for just one season. But what a season!
Rick Mace, the veteran bear biologist who heads Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks South Fork Grizzly Study, was a pink-faced youth right out of college when he was assigned, along with other trappers working with Chuck Jonkel's Border Grizzly Project, to snare the Giefer bear. It's Rick's opinion tht he has never come up against a more intelligent bear.
"He was incredibly smart. The way he avoided our best sets, the way he stayed clear of cabins when people were around..."
"And you feel he was smarter than your Mud Lake Bear?"
"Oh, yeah. Much smarter."
"The Mud Lake Bear was pretty sharp."
The research biologist nodded. "But a bear can be smart about some things and not others. The Giefer Griz knew about people and traps, but he didn't know about guns and hunting. The Mud Lake Bear? Who knows? Maybe he's still out there, but I doubt it."
"How about the Dairy Queen Bear? He's still out there."
"Yeah, Digger's out there. And you've got to give him credit, although nobody's trying to catch him like they did the Giefer Grizzly." The man's eyes took on a faraway look. "Talk about cagey!"
Now, typing these words into my computer screen, I'm still awed. But the Giefer Griz has been dead these many years. And I remember wondering, when he died, if there was any deterrent or aversive conditioning for bears that didn't have lead in it. Did anyone have the answer?
Back then, in 1977, the silence was deafening."
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Post by warsaw on Mar 30, 2013 8:21:17 GMT -9
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Post by warsaw on May 30, 2013 12:14:20 GMT -9
Play behavior of brown bears (Ursus arctos) and human presence at Pack Creek, Admiralty Island, Alaska R Fagen, J Fagen - Bears: Their Biology and Management, 1990 "Brown bears of all ages play. They use fighting movements and postures to interact harmlessly with conspecifics, they chase birds, they roll and slide, and they manipulate objects. Individual bears at the Pack Creek estuary on northern Admiralty Island played from less than 1% to over 20% of their total time in sight in 1987-8. Play frequencies in 1987-8 were independent of presence or absence of human visitors." www.bearbiology.com/fileadmin/tpl/Downloads/URSUS/Vol_8/Fagen_Fagen_8.pdf
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Post by warsaw on May 30, 2013 13:35:13 GMT -9
Average bear could be pretty smart Computer tests of solitary species reveal animals’ ability to learn concepts By Susan Milius
Web edition: August 24, 2012 Print edition: October 6, 2012; Vol.182 #7 (p. 14) A+ A- Text Size Enlarge Black bears, which live relatively solitary lives as adults, show an ability to learn concepts, a new study finds. Dave Allen Photography/Shutterstock
American black bears that take computerized tests by pawing, nose-bumping or licking a touch screen may rival great apes when it comes to learning concepts.
Using three zoo bear siblings as classroom subjects, comparative cognitive psychologist Jennifer Vonk of Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., and her colleagues presented pairs of pictures to the bears on a rugged computer screen and gave them food treats for pawing the image from a certain category. To demonstrate learning a concept, bears had to figure out what kind of picture would earn a treat and then pick that kind of image from a new set.
One challenge, picking the portrait of a black bear instead of an image of a person, could be mastered by relying on a mix of visual clues such as furriness or snout shape. But picking out all the animals from non-animals — cars or landscapes, for example — required finding more abstract connections among pictures that didn’t look much at all alike.
At least one of the three bears showed some capacity at each of the five levels tested, Vonk and colleagues report in an upcoming Animal Behaviour.
Bear behavior has been “very underappreciated,” says comparative ethologist Gordon Burghardt of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. “They’re very smart and they have large brains.” They also live relatively solitary lives, which make them an important contrast to the mostly social animals tested for complex mental capacities to date.
Researchers have proposed that social living may favor the evolution of mental capacities different from those of solitary life, Vonk says. Highly social animals, such as chimpanzees, may need more skills for cooperating or spotting clues to other animals’ intentions. For loner species, evolution might hone more physical powers such as spatial memory for finding food or the ability to grasp the mechanisms behind tool use.
The tests in the new study were aimed at homing in on the mental capacities of these not particularly social bears. The bears differed considerably in the challenges they met, possibly because of the order in which researchers presented the tests. One animal learned to tell animals from non-animals but didn’t quite get the “bears vs. humans” challenge.
All three bears rose to the challenge of computer use, though. When the biggest, Brutus, realized that someone would give him treats for nosing a screen pressed against the fence of the enclosure, “he wouldn’t let anyone else near the computer,” Vonk says. She spent a lot of time throwing cookies and yelling to herd various bears toward or away from the computer cart. Even with her best efforts, “they would find ways of opening a little door and barging in on each other’s sessions,” she says.
To understand what the results mean will take a lot more analysis of the tasks themselves, says Lars Chittka at Queen Mary, University of London. The new study suggests that bears’ ability to categorize images may be on par with that of honeybees, which don’t have particularly big brains. Yet the bees can learn to categorize diverse images such as flowers, landscapes or green vegetation.
“The real question cognitive scientists need to ask is, what is the computational nature of the task, and what neural circuitry might be required?” Chittka says. “Once we have answers to such questions, we can then ask questions about their evolution, or the required brain size, or the ‘social intelligence hypothesis.’ But not before.”
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