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The Intelligence of Bears - Page 3

© Gerald Eugene Smith

One researcher who has studied black bear intelligence thinks they are at least as intelligent as baboons. Some of the information I have encountered suggests a pretty high cognitive level. One of the most remarkable photos I have shows a black bear walking upright on hard-packed snow and holding a large stick. The bear is making big curlicues in the snow with the stick and examining his handiwork with intense concentration. Another example is from the National Zoo in Washington. A black bear there figured out how to escape from his enclosure. He was smart enough to keep it a secret. He would escape late at night after everybody left with his friend, an Indian sloth bear, and the two of them would tour the zoo, being careful to return to their enclosures before dawn. They kept this up for quite a while before the zookeepers got suspicious and caught them at it. Black bears show a distinct fascination with human artifacts. One informant told me that a local black bear likes to enter her Ford car if she leaves the window open and sit in the driver's seat with his paws on the wheel as if he were driving it. Another bear kept in a cage learned how to pick the lock by inserting his claw in the keyhole and adroitly manipulating the mechanism. Circus trainers consistently rate bears of all kinds as more intelligent than dogs, horses or the big cats.

We should remember that bears to a large extent occupy an ecological role in northern wilderness areas similar to ours. In colder climate areas, they are typically the dominant and most intelligent animals. In North America, this was especially true of grizzlies. None of the Native American tribes regarded themselves as superior to the big bears. In fact, in California, the grizzlies were in many ways dominant over the Indians, much to their sorrow and woe. Native peoples in the Northern Hemisphere, the inheritors of the PaleoArctic Tradition all have a profound regard for the bear, whether in primordial Europe, the vast forests and tundras of Asia or in the varied landscapes of North America. These peoples consistently regarded bears as spritually powerful beings of deep wisdom. They believed that great knowledge for survival could be obtained by carefully observing bears. In fact, any hunting and gathering tribe could learn the basics of survival from the bears. Almost certainly, the ancestors of the Eskimo learned how to survive in the Arctic from the polar bear. Probably, the earliest human tribes in the cold northern lands learned the basics for living there from the wolves (hunting) and the bears (gathering). Bears are masters of survival.

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