Daily Updates
Personalities - UPDATE April 11, 2016
11
Thinking of bear personalities, bears show more expression than they are usually given credit for. It?s true Guy the bear
Guy the bear
they don?t wag their tail. They don?t snarl and show their teeth like cats and dogs do. They don?t have the vocal repertoire that ravens do with their multiple syrinxes. But by meeting the bears in this area and spending time up close with them, the different personalities are recognizable to everyone.
Calm Jack doesn?t think twice about someone trying to find his pulse on his chest or in his groin (femoral artery) or pulling some hairs for DNA analysis. More nervous bears would wonder what we?re doing. Jack has been coming here since before 2003. Calm as he is, we never hear of him being seen out in the woods. He visits a few community feeding stations and knows exactly where to go to be safe.
Nervous Shadow has had much longer to get over her fear at feeding stations but can?t seem to do it. At 29 this year, she is not easy to approach. Mostly, she patrols the shadows, which led to her name. When she has cubs, she is looking for bears to chase off. She is easily recognizable with her now gray face.
Guy the Bear
Same Guy, different expression
Lily is very accepting of people she knows, especially at feeding stations, but she is often hard to approach in the woods.
Big V-Dot, with his sad eyes, is 15-20 years old and has been coming around for many years. He is timid around people but getting more relaxed in familiar situations.
Big Harry has a long history of seeing us with June. Over the years, he has gradually become more accepting of us.
Guy is in his mid-teens and has always been bold, which only means he feels confident. He has become calm, patient, and laid back and can look bored and almost morose or can look excited and happy as in the two pictures. He is playful with the other bears and trusting of people.
Then there are all the females you already know a bit about. Seeing them with cubs brings out more of their personalities, and the cubs themselves have their own personalities. Who can forget Hope and her younger sister Faith who grew up with a desire to play, perhaps instilled by the raucous play that she experienced early on in the den and out with playful Hope. We look forward to seeing Faith, Fern, Sophie, Lily, Jewel, Donna, Braveheart, Ursula, Bow, and the other females.
The amazing thing in all of of this is how different these bears who know people are from what most people believe. They don?t go around seeking food from people. They expect food at the feeding stations and have varying degrees of caution while at the feeding stations. Some are quick to settle down and accept people. Shadow doesn?t seem to have that in her. Siblings differ. Whiteheart was quick to accept a person walking with her and ignoring them while they did. Her sibling Blackheart never was a bear we could accompany.
June was a bear we could walk with in the woods from the first time we met her in 2004. That?s what made her such a valuable study bear. Her sibling Hazel was very accepting of people at feeding stations though I never saw her out in the woods, except in a den.
We don?t know of any of these bears behaving the way some authorities claim they should. I haven?t heard of any of them going around approaching people for food like the DNR claimed over and over to the media but could not come up with a single witness to verify that in court.
I look forward to seeing Jack, Burt, Guy, and some of the other bears that defy the common beliefs. I know there are many people across the country who feed bears and get to know the truth about them. I look forward to people learning directly from the bears here this summer. Only eleven spots are left in the Black Bear Field Courses at
http://www.bearstudy.org/website/field-study-courses.html where the best teachers are recognized by their black cloaks of fur. Of the $2,500, $2,350 is tax deductible.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
Author
Topic: Jewel and her cubs (Read 2358218 times)