Bonding, story book, polar bears, and your help
March 26, 2010 – 9:49 PM CDT
Lily and Hope
Now we know better. After looking carefully at this picture of Lily coming out of her den on March 24, it’s no wonder she ‘discombobulated’ the camera the other day! Lynn had fastened a rubber band to the very tree Lily uses to pull herself out of the den (notice her paw and the multiple claw marks on the tree). She puts her paw exactly where the rubber band held the camera tube to the tree. It’s no wonder the rubber band caught her attention and become her favorite new toy. She had a grand ole time today deftly manipulating it with her claws as Hope nursed.
Lily and Hope are bonding ever more closely. Hope seems to be sleeping in a more relaxed manner. There is so much we want to compare between these bears and what we can learn in future den cams. A team of top engineers is working to free us from limitations of having to be near electricity and telephone.
Questions
Some of the newer Lily den cam watchers have the usual questions about bears losing their fear of people, associating people with food, and endangering people or themselves. We again would like to refer them to the update http://www.bear.org/website/lily-a-hope/live-den-cam/288-update-march-3-2010-358-pm-cst-.html and to the research paper “Does diversionary feeding create nuisance bears and jeopardize public safety?” So many of the assumptions about the bear-human interface make good common sense but do not make bear sense. There’s a need to replace common misconceptions with facts through scientific study, which is why we are conducting this multi-faceted study.
The book
A book of your personal encounters with bears is looking ever more possible. Send your stories to
The polar bear mount
Some of you wanted to know more about how we got the polar bear mount. Two years ago, a couple angels donated for a polar bear and other projects. With their permission, we used their money instead for debt reduction. Meanwhile, we saw polar bear prices rising sharply. We knew the exact polar bear mount we wanted, and we wanted to get it before the price went out of sight or was sold to someone else. We had exhibits on black and grizzly bears and felt we needed to round out our coverage of the North American Bears.
Polar bears
Polar bears have long been portrayed as the most terrifying bear—the bear that stalks people. There is so much to tell about polar bears. They’ve been misrepresented badly by media hype. Dr. Tom Smith of Brigham Young University says polar bears have an undeserved reputation for ferocity, particularly when compared with grizzlies. He said polar bears act much more like black bears (very risk aversive) than grizzlies (much more aggressive). Working in Alaska, he examined over 600 bear attacks spanning 125 years of Alaska history. He found only six polar bear incidents, including two fatalities. He said, “There is a false belief that polar bears are among the fiercest bears in the world. The data argue otherwise.”
Russian polar bear biologist Nikita Ovsianikov agrees. He walks among polar bears carrying only a stick and has had over 2,000 encounters. He says polar bears have to be careful not to get injured. Injuries could be death sentences if they hampered the long travel and quick skill needed to capture seals. He says grizzly bears can be more aggressive and take greater risks because they feed on vegetation and berries and their feeding would not be as badly hampered by injuries.
Native people along the Arctic coast know how timid polar bears are. They run polar bears out of their villages using only sticks. They chase them into the ocean and make them swim a half mile or more to the village’s piles of walrus bones, where there is more food for them than in the village. Nevertheless, as with any behavior, aggressiveness toward humans falls under a bell-shaped curve with some individuals out in the tails being exceptions.
We wanted to tell the polar bear’s story and keep our promise to the donor and get the polar bear mount while it was still affordable. Things came together this winter. The polar bear owner graciously dropped his price for us, and your purchases allowed us to obtain the mount without borrowing. We have now kept our promise to the donor whose money we had diverted to debt reduction.
The debt
By the end of this month, we will have paid back over $120,000 in debt thanks to your continuing contributions, leaving $580,000. We have been paying down the debt as your contributions came in—to reduce our interest payments as quickly as possible.
We thank two people who heard of us through the Lily Den Cam and Facebook and put the Bear Center in their will—one willed $25,000 and the other willed her house in Phoenix. Sometime in the distant future, these bequests will make a difference for bears.
Thank you again for your contributions and support in many ways.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center