Survival Skills of Bears

[brotherbear]

The Grizzly Almanac by Robert H. Busch.

The brains of carnivores continued to show an increase in brain size, and the brains of today's carnivores are larger than those of their ancestors. And among the carnivores, grizzlies have the largest brain relative to body size of any terrestrial carnivore.
In grizzlies and other higher mammals, the outer layer of the brain, the cerebral cortex, is very large compared to the total brain volume. The cortex covers the cerebrum, the largest and most complex portion of the brain. It has crucial sensory, motor, and associative functions and thus is partly responsible for what humans call intelligence.
In grizzlies, about 45 percent of the brain is cortex. In comparison, the cortex of a mouse is only about 30 percent of total brain volume; the cortex of a chimpanzee is about 55 percent of total brain volume.
Grizzlies are generally regarded as very intelligent, capable of learning from a single experience and capable of solving simple problems.
Doug Seus, an animal trainer from Utah who has trained dozens of animals for television and feature films, is the owner of Bart, a 1,500-pound Kodiak bear. Seus says, "I train black bears, wolves, and cougars for film work too. My grizzlies and Kodiaks are the hardest to tame, but the easiest to train; generally, you only have to teach them something once' ( quoted in Chadwick, 1986 ).

Behaviorists studying animal intelligence use a number of criteria to evaluate their subjects, including the ability of the animal to learn, especially from a single experience; the ability to form concepts; and the ability to combine experiences into a single pattern, a process which humans call reasoning. The ability to benefit or learn from the experiences of others is another factor in intelligence.

Conscious thinking and self-awareness are often associated with intelligence. Lance A. Olsen of the University of Montana believes that the ability of grizzlies to find hiding spots where they can see but not be seen demonstrates a degree of conscious thinking that gores beyond pure instinct.

Because of a lack of a direct system of measuring animal intelligence, most information available on the subject is anecdotal. However, as behaviorist D.C. Dennett points out, "ethologists know how misleading and, officially, unusable anecdotes are, and yet on the other hand they are often so telling" ( quoted in Mortenson, 1987 ).

Anecdotes abound of bears using rocks to spring traps, for example, a clear demonstration of a bear's ability to learn and adapt to a situation. Author Timothy Treadwell, who spent many years watching grizzlies in southern Alaska, tells an interesting anecdote about a family of grizzlies trying to ascend a steep ridge. The big mother bear had no problem, but her cubs were struggling. The mother bear then "dug holes in the earth, which served as a ladder for her tiny spring cubs. One by one, the miniature bears ascended the homemade steps, then disappeared" ( Treadwell, 1997 ).

British Columbia grizzly biologist Bruce McLellan tells an interesting anecdote on grizzly intelligence that involves a female grizzly that was originally darted in the rear and then set free. Much later, she was caught in a foot snare. When the biologist approached, "she had dug a hole in the ground and was sitting in it in order to protect her butt from being hit by the tranquilizing dart. She had remembered the previous capture three years ago", ( quoted in Domico, 1988 ).

As Alberta bear biologist Rob Wielgus jokingly says, the average grizzly bear is "always smarter than your average grizzly bear researcher" ( quoted in Hummel, 1991 ). Reply