Holly, Lucky, Animal Minds - UPDATE December 20, 2015
Dr. Rogers and DuffyHolly has left the camera unsmeared, and Lily Fans are grabbing good shots of her interactions with Lucky. This one is a good picture series
https://youtu.be/D_RZ54Yq8gs,
and these three are videos
Holly and Lucky Wrestling and Cuddling 12/20/2015,
Holly and Lucky 12/20/2015,
Holly and Lucky's Afternoon Wrestling Match 12/20/2015.
They are enjoying the winter together.
A Lily Fan also sent this terrific article that mentions Dr. Donald Griffin and many of the recent breakthroughs that resulted from his beginnings in the field.
http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21676961-inner-lives-animals-are-hard-study-there-evidence-they-may-be-lot-richer-science-once-thought?platform=hootsuiteToday, we submitted the following abstract after being invited to make this presentation at the International Bear Conference coming up June 12-16 in Anchorage, Alaska. When I give Sue an outline of the talk, Sue said she will pull together videos using the catalog she created these past months. The abstract is one word short of the 350-word limit.
Abstract: Understanding black bear vocalizations and body language for research, management, and coexistence. Lynn L. Rogers and Susan A. Mansfield, Wildlife Research Institute, 1482 Trygg Road, Ely, MN 55731
Using audio/video examples, we discuss the meanings of black bear vocalizations and body language: (a) Amiable grunts and tongue-clicks, (b) Ritualized displays of anxiety characterized by bears harmlessly exhaling sharply along with aggressive-looking body language (long nose, ears back, lunge and ground-slap, false charge, blow and clack), and (c) Vocalizations that express a range of emotions. Understanding black bear language enabled us to allay bears? fears, build trust, and conduct close-up observational studies like Jane Goodall pioneered with chimpanzees. No bear viewed us as significant food-givers or competitors, much less as enemies or friends. Instead, they learned to ignore researchers logging data 2-8 meters away for 24 to 48-hour periods. Using these methods, we conducted a U. S. Forest Service habitat-use study in 1984-1991 and did a comparative study in 1996-2015 around a community that had fed black bears since 1961. Bears we attempted to work with in the latter area fell in four categories: (a) Bears that remained too unapproachable to observe; (b) Bears that accepted touch, hand-feeding, and radio-collaring at community feeding locations but remained unapproachable elsewhere; (c) Bears that, even away from the feeding locations, learned our routines and could be approached briefly for adjustments to radio-collars, replacement of GPS batteries, etc.; and (d) Bears that recognized our routines, ignored us, revealed their lives, and in some cases allowed us to place webcams in their dens. Popular predictions about deleterious consequences of habituation and food-conditioning did not materialize in our study areas. In the first study, bear problems were 88% fewer than before the study. Confirming the safety of that study, government officials protected the study area by closing it to hunting. In the second study, there had been no attacks during the decades of community feeding, and bear complaints in the study area ran 80% below the statewide average on a per-bear basis. In all our black bear studies, no bear ever came after us and hurt us. Trust-based observational studies, combined with telemetry and GPS data, revealed more about black bear life and habitat needs than we could have learned in any other way.
The picture is from the early days of experimenting to see if black bears that tolerated company are trustworthy. I never had a problem.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
Author
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