Shylow Bear are sensitive to any variance from usual routines. Lily is used to people accompanying Lynn and is not disturbed by them. However, she doesn’t quite know what to make of people 150 feet away. It’s the same as Sue walking with June and observing June run from a hiker that appears in the distance. It’s the same as Lynn walking with Terri years back and coming into a blueberry patch where a man and his wife were bent over picking berries. At first, Terri pounced and blustered at them. It was a windy day and the people never heard her. Terri gave up and left the patch with Lynn close behind. The people never knew they were there.
Another example: Shylow will accept Lynn crouching half under him and putting his head against Shylow’s chest to listen for a heart rate when he understands the situation. But Lynn wearing a different shirt and approaching from a different direction sends Shylow up a tree. With Lynn talking to him and behaving in familiar ways, Shylow then looks at Lynn with anxiety on his face, listening to his voice and trying to decide if it is safe or not. Or in another instance, Lynn approached Shylow wearing familiar clothes. Shylow looked calm. At close range, Shylow sniffed Lynn’s head and drew a breath showing anxiety. Lynn stepped back and looked at Shylow’s anxious face. Then Lynn realized he had washed his hair a couple hours before and didn’t smell familiar.
Juliet visits a feeding stationA similar story comes from a graduate student who developed a trusting relationship with Blackheart one fall. The next spring the grad student was back to begin her thesis work. Overwinter, she had begun wearing perfume. When she tried to join Blackheart in the woods, Blackheart pounced at her and blew, showing high anxiety. The grad student ran. A few minutes later, the grad student sat by a tree and talked to Blackheart. The grad student looked and sounded like the trusted person, but didn’t smell right. Eventually, Blackheart got up the courage to come smell the grad student’s head. Through the perfume, Blackheart apparently sorted out the identifying smells of the grad student and relaxed.
When we try to approach most bears in the woods, they know our voices but want back-up identification information. They typically circle downwind and/or around to our backtrail to sniff branches we touched as we passed. That, followed by familiar sounds and behaviors on our part, causes most bears that are familiar with our routines to relax and allow collar checks.
AsterThe attack on the 12-year-old Michigan girl has gotten a lot of press. Lynn was on WGN radio in Chicago talking about it the other day. All the behaviors of the bear fit a mother defending her cubs. Attacks by black bear mothers with cubs are very rare. Lynn can remember less than a dozen, and all ended when the person lay still. Such attacks are defensive, so there is no need to continue attacking when the threat is neutralized. The same was true in the Michigan case. The girl, jogging, most likely ran toward a mother bear, unknowlingly threatening the bear, and precipitating a defensive attack that ended when the girl played dead. Bears have different personalities, and most mother bears wouldn’t attack in that situation. A male bear was killed 2 miles away. The family of the girl believed it was a smaller bear that did the attack. Today, DNA showed that the male was indeed the wrong bear. Nothing in the reported behavior during the attack fit the bear being a male.
Mike and Lorie caught up with Aster and Juliet today to replace a GPS unit (Aster), replace batteries (Juliet), and attach plastic fluorescent strips to radio-collars (Aster and Juliet).
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
All photos taken today unless otherwise noted.