Curious Bear - "Hey whatcha doing there?"

[Rusty Heap]

Curious Bear - Question: "Hey whatcha doing there?"


Must of been an old circus act of his........he heh.

great video from a Tree Stand hunter:

Curious bear takes a step too far, quick question diffuses the situation. [VIDEO]


Must be comforting having a 12 awg sitting across your lap in times like these that you can casually talk to the curious bear...

[Jeff Higgins]

That's pretty darn cool he was able to catch that on camera. I've had a couple of those kinds of "conversations" with black bears over the years, without the luxury of being in a tree stand. They really are quite curious, but I swear most of them are half blind. If one is approaching it can be very effective to just start talking to them in a calm voice, or to throw a hat or glove at them so they can get a snoot full of your scent. I've had them twist and turn their heads like a big dog when I start talking. If you don't sound excited, and they feel like they have enough room, they just run off.

[Laneco]

Bears have poor vision, but a great sense of smell.

I'm sure I would not have been so calm... I would have let out an ear piercing shriek which would have startled the bear into flipping off the ladder backwards before bolting for the woods. Which would have made me laugh so hard, that I'd have fallen out of the tree stand camera and all.

angela

[flatbutt]

they are incredible creatures.

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by Laneco

Bears have [1] poor vision, but a [2] great sense of smell.

[1] not clear if they do or don't & you have to define what poor vision is...

- they do have a tapetum lucidum (shiny layer in the back of the retina); often found in semi-nocturnal animals & it reflects the additional photons that miss the sensory cell "targets" back forward so those photons can hit the sensory cells ---> upshot is that photons from various directions can trigger the sensory cell, so you never know which ones did it ---> thus, lower resolution (acuity) is the trade-off for seeing well at night

I dunno what they've got re a macula or fovea,* but somebody must have done that work as it an easy dissection to get the data

- but it was recently found that they can discriminate hues (colors, sorta) so they must have some color vision ability

[2] true


* = high sensor density areas used for high-res vision; good things to have if you fly, or swing thru the trees and are looking to grab that next branch, hence common in birds & primates

[RWebb]

oh yeh, the curiosity is often associated with being pretty smart & they are

if you think about it, they have a larger brain than a dog or wolf & they must be doing something with all that gray matter

[Jeff Higgins]

An old Indian saying goes something like "when the leaf falls in the forest, the deer hears it, the goat sees it, and the bear smells it".

Wildlife photographer Andy Russel wrote a wonderful account (in his book Grizzly Country) about several days (maybe a week?) he spent photographing an interior grizzly sow and her yearling cubs. He said it took him several days to even begin to suspect she was absolutely blind. She was getting along that well with no vision whatsoever. He did confirm, to his satisfaction, that she was completely blind. He got some fantastic photographs as well.

[Zeke]

"Hey, what are ya doing there?" I don't think that would have been the first words out of me given that a bear was coming up my ladder.

I did see that the bear smelled everything the guy in the stand touched including the branches he brushed against. If the guy had food up there, would the results have been the same?

So, did you see Sarah Palin last night?



No, don't PARF this up, just realize how dumb that was and let it go to the bears. (just wait for the pop up to disappear, about 8 seconds)

[syncroid]

That guy was incredibly calm! I had a bear come into my tent once while back packing in Yosemite with my dad. I was so scared that no sound was coming out of my mouth. I tried to scream and couldn't. There is nothing quite like having a bear six inchs away from your face smelling you.

[Jagshund]

Originally Posted by RWebb

[1] not clear if they do or don't & you have to define what poor vision is...

- they do have a tapetum lucidum (shiny layer in the back of the retina); often found in semi-nocturnal animals & it reflects the additional photons that miss the sensory cell "targets" back forward so those photons can hit the sensory cells ---> upshot is that photons from various directions can trigger the sensory cell, so you never know which ones did it ---> thus, lower resolution (acuity) is the trade-off for seeing well at night

I dunno what they've got re a macula or fovea,* but somebody must have done that work as it an easy dissection to get the data

- but it was recently found that they can discriminate hues (colors, sorta) so they must have some color vision ability

[2] true


* = high sensor density areas used for high-res vision; good things to have if you fly, or swing thru the trees and are looking to grab that next branch, hence common in birds & primates

Please tell me that you either stole this info from somewhere else or that you're a bear optometrist during your off time.

[RWebb]

heh heh - sorry, that is all off the top of my head; it is some detritus left over from my career as a physiological ecologist (or was that env'l physiologist?) and teaching those types of physiology courses + mammalogy & ornithology (birds)

[aigel]

Must not have had a bear tag?

I would have said something a little earlier. The bear was only a split second from the guy's face considering it's max speed going up a tree ...

George