| 1 | Bear eats glazed donut |
For many years, a theory has been popular that if humans went extinct overnight, it would be bears who gradually became smarter and inherited the Earth. Others vote for rats or chimpanzees, but a bigger mystery is how intelligent bears are right now. They’ve been observed to use tools by scratching themselves with a riverbed rock, and in 2014, undergraduate Alex Waroff of the University of Washington decided to conduct a better experiment. 3 male bears and 5 female bears were tempted with a glazed donut, and one by one, the bears climbed up, tempted by irresistible bear hunger. The donut had been established as food, and now the fun part came, as the tree stump was moved into a far corner.
It didn’t take long for the star bear to emerge: a 9 year old female called Kio born in 2005. She moved the tree stump and flipped it over almost instantly, grabbing her donut prize. Better, she later decided that a green plastic box was easier to move instead.
According to the researchers, this was the very definition of tool use: “She manipulates an inanimate object in several steps to help her achieve a goal“. The other grizzlies were significantly slower, but 6/8 got there in the end. The researchers were keen to stress that they weren’t on a mission to get bears addicted to donuts (which were donated by a local grocery store).
| 2 | Bears reinvade Chernobyl |
In October 2014, Ukrainian conservationist Sergey Gashchak received a fuzzy grey image of a brown bear from a network of camera traps he’d placed, with its eyes glowing in the dark. It didn’t matter that the quality was sub-144p, what mattered was the location – the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. For the first time since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, brown bears were back in the area. In fact, it was the first time for a century. They joined an ever growing army of wolves, horses, foxes and radioactive deer.
Since its 350,000 residents were evacuated in 1986, the CEZ has become one of Europe’s top wildlife reserves, purely by accident. Working in cooperation with British scientist Dr Mike Wood, Gashchak had set up 42 constantly rotating camera traps, with 14 each in high, medium, and low radioactivity areas.
Gashchak had already spotted brown bear footprints in early 2013, but definitive picture proof had eluded his grasp. Now, he had it. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone encompasses 1600 square miles of swamp land, traditional forests and meadows. It’s perfect for dozens of bears, let alone one bear. The question is whether the bear’s offspring, if it has any, will have mutations or deformed limbs. It’s happened to wolves, but some conservationists believe that Chernobyl has been a net positive for wildlife. For example, the rare Przewalski’s horse has made it their safe haven, sheltering in abandoned buildings.
The other possibility is that the radioactivity makes the internet’s worst nightmare a reality – bearsharktopus.
| 3 | Swiss zoo euthanises its cub |
Conservationists worldwide erupted in outcry in March 2014 when a popular Swiss zoo called Dählhölzli Zoo had one of its cubs euthanised. Cub 4 was in an enclosure with its mother and father, Masha and Misha, who were a gift from the Russian president Dmitri Medvedev in 2009. 1 week earlier, the father bear had astonished watching visitors as it mauled its second offspring Cub 3 to death, to win back the affection of the torn mother.
After 2 days of peace, the father bear had started bullying the cub. It was only a matter of time before another murderous rampage, and so the Swiss zoo euthanised the cub in order to spare it “further distress and pain”. Swiss Animal Protection (SAP) asked angrily why the male wasn’t separated, as in the wild, a male bear will leave its mate immediately after courting. Anyone with cursory bear knowledge could have expected the gruesome outcome, they argued. The zoo responded that Misha and Masha have an unusually close bond, but why couldn’t the cub have been separated, SAP then asked. After all, Misha and Masha were human-reared, proving that the cub didn’t strictly need its mother.
Even worse, the zoo planned to stuff the cub and parade it around in front of schoolchildren as a reminder that “nature is brootal”. The bear was deep frozen, and the skin removed, to be placed over a plastic mould designed perfectly to resemble the dead cub.
| 4 | Mango the bear’s lifesaving operation |
Bears might be 800 pound beasts who are infinitely stronger, faster and more huggable than humans, but they suffer from many of the same health problems. Mango, for example, was a blond-coloured Syrian brown bear living in the Ramat Gan Safari Park of Israel. He was 19 years old, and in May 2014, zookeepers noticed that he was walking with a strange gait.
One week later, his right forepaws were completely paralysed, and a high powered X-ray showed a ruptured disc between vertebras 2 and 3. The zookeepers were surprised, as most of the older bears at Ramat Gan had no mobility problems. The bear was transferred to Safari hospital, where it took 10 people to lift the heavily sedated Mango onto the operating table. Even tranquilising him was a challenge.
The operation lasted 10 hours, and first step was shaving all the fur off Mango’s back. With an IV drip through his snout, they propped his head up on a pillow wrapped in a trash bag, and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his right paw. His skin was cut open, and his spinal cord exposed for five hours. Finally, the doctors switched the X-ray back on, and rejoiced – the operation had been a completely success.
The vets said that “Mango will undergo a length process of rehabilitation“, but were optimistic that he would walk again. They declared it to be a world first operation, although that said, nobody knows what’s happening in the cold depths of Russia.
| 5 | Kent zoo rescues Bulgarian bears |
While Bulgaria was under Soviet rule, its ruling commissars were fond of hunting brown bears in the Kormissosh forests of the Rhodopes mountains. Consequently, Bulgaria invented the bear breeding farm, bare concrete pits with no roofs where up to 75 bears were imprisoned at once, with no ability to roam. The temperatures would reach 35C, and the bears showed clear signs of mental trauma.
In 2007, Bulgaria joined the EU, and bear breeding was mercifully outlawed. But where would the existing bears go? In November 2014, a zoo in Kent made space for two of them, and the bear travelled 1600 miles overland. A normal bear approaching hibernation would score 5/5 on the body condition scale, but on arrival, these bears only scored a 1.5. Jagged bones stuck out, there was no discernible fat or muscle, and they were clearly mentally traumatised. Not for long though!
At first, the bear pair were kept in spacious quarters, where they could see, smell and almost touch each other constantly. Their diet was changed to fruit and vegetables, rolled oats and mealworms, with the occasional honey and marmalade. Eventually, the bears were released into a wide, spacious enclosure, and almost immediately, the “stereotypical behaviour” of imprisoned bears disappeared. They were exploring like normal bears should, and their curiosity was returning. The two bears developed a close relationship, which social media users called a “bear bromance”. The one hitch was that the bears didn’t hibernate, but it was still early days.
| 6 | Russian bear gets its revenge |
Disturbing signs that bears were growing more intelligent arrived in 2017, when a bear stole a IZH shotgun from a hunter’s cabin. He barely damaged anything else – it was like he knew exactly what he wanted. However, even starker evidence of super intelligent bears arrived in 2013, when 3 hunting buddies were exploring a forest in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug in Russia. When a brown bear burst from the undergrowth, one hunter reacted quickly and shot it in the leg. The agonised bear fled the scene, and the hunters retired to their wooden cabin for the night, probably joking about the incident.
Nothing could prepare them for the final scene the next morning. The shooter’s Ford Toyota was found destroyed from head to toe. The windshield was smashed in, the wing mirror was obliterated and the bumper was punched inwards. The lights were broken and the once comfortable seats were ripped apart. It was a revenge attack, pure and simple, and the final evidence was that his best friends’ cars were left untouched.
“That must have been a busy night for the bear, he worked hard” said one hunter, “did you leave anything sweet inside?”. “No, I didn’t”, replied the stunned shooter. They concluded that the bear pinpointed the shooter’s car with its hypersensitive sense of smell. The bear was probably limping for a few weeks, but it had the last laugh.
| 7 | The Romanian bear saga |
Romania has the most bears of any non-Russian European country, numbering 8000 as of 2020. But in 2014, a rising wave of anger swept the country over constant damage to farms and property, personified by a Transylvanian politician called Csaba Borboly. He claimed that bears were wreaking havoc on the countryside, and were a natural disaster equal to floods or forest fires.
In late September, the Romanian government had increased the yearly hunting quota for bears to 550 from 460 in 2013, compared to 0 in Montana, but Borboly wanted it higher. Egging him on was the hunting lobby and an increasingly anti-bear media, for whom bears had become a regular punchbag. In fact, hunting wasn’t enough: Borboly wanted “state institutions such as the police, the paramilitary and even the army”.
But conservationist Csaba Domokos argued that bears were in more danger than people thought. The counting system relied solely on paw prints, and because bears have huge territory, he argued, individual ones were sometimes counted multiple times, increasing the number by thousands artificially.
A wave of poaching swept the country – Domoskos claimed to have saved 5 bears from steel traps in one 25 mile stretch, and believed that many more victims were lying unseen. Hunting enthusiasts claimed that Romania had 10,000 bears, while the more pessimistic conservationists argued 3000. Domoskos mourned the loss of one large male bear who was extremely adventurous and had activated 3700 location points in 6 months. “It does feel like a personal loss to me“, he said.
| 8 | Robo-bear in New York City |
Chobani is an American yogurt company who have long used real life bear actors like Bart II in their adverts. In 2014, they successfully took the concept to the next level by getting a guy in a 12 foot mechanical bear suit to roam the streets of New York terrifying people. The suit was a high-tech contraption of wires, metal and special buttons to operate its jaws, with a very small-looking human entombed inside it. Descending onto the street, the bear burst around corners and caused women with handbags to jump back in fright. Coffee-carrying businessmen reacted with genuine fear, while the occasional passerby was so harried and busy that they didn’t notice – that’s New York for you. Either that, or it was a case of “seen it all, done it all”.
The bear’s antics included attacking a hot dog stand, and scaring a passing dog which its owner was forced to pick up. The only people who didn’t seem frightened were a toddler who stared in amusement, and two construction workers who wanted their picture taken.
Occasionally, the bear gets more relaxed and sits on a bench, most likely to avoid being shot. The advert ends with a mysterious hand placing a Chobani yogurt pot in front of robo-bear, which he prepares to devour. In 50 years, there’ll probably be old grandmas insisting that they saw a bear in New York City once.
| 9 | Bear escapes and kills lioness |
This is the dark story of 2014, so stop reading now if you’re an animal lover. Established in 1986, Jinyangho zoo in South Korea is a notoriously cruel place, where the animals are kept in tiny cages with haunted expressions on their faces. The equipment hasn’t been replaced in decades; the ape cage is so old that touching it leaves a trail of red rust on your hand. Just see the reviews on tripadvisor.co.uk.
On November 29th 2014, a 10 year old brown bear weighing 440 pounds approached the cage of a lioness. There was a padlock, but it was so rusted that the bear swatted it aside with its paw. Once inside, the bear launched a savage attack on the resident lioness, resulting in her being put down the next day. It wasn’t explained how the bear had escaped its own cage. Unbelievably, the zoo reported it to the local government as death by “natural causes”.
The zoo claimed that the lion had no external injuries, that she was 20 years old and it was probably due to old age. But eyewitnesses said that the lioness and floor were covered with blood. The bear itself wasn’t to blame, as its aggression would have been inflated by the traumatic conditions.
Apparently, South Korea’s welfare requirements for zoos are unusually loose for a developed country. Jinyangho zoo has 260 animals in total with 52 species spread across 20 cages.
Do you love animals? Then don’t visit Jinyangho zoo!
| 10 | RIP to the world’s oldest bear |
Over in Russia, the land where anything can and will happen if bears are involved, St Petersburg zoo entered a state of mourning in August 2014 when Varvara the bear died aged 35. She was speculated, though not proven, to be the oldest brown bear in the world, after previous record holder Tikhon had died not long before at age 36. Although she had spent more time resting than usual, she had enjoyed a flashy birthday party in June, and still loved to gobble down rabbit, salmon and fruit. Varvara was said to be the star attraction among the zoo’s visitors. The average life expectancy for a wild bear is 15 to 20, about 15% reach age 24, and wild bears over 30 are almost unheard of.
In a statement on the Russian social network Vkontakt, the zoo thanked Varvara’s loyal fanbase for their support. According to a spokesman from the zoo: “Animals live longer in zoos where they are exposed to no dangers, enjoy diverse good options and good healthcare”.
That said, Varvara wasn’t the oldest brown bear ever. The record is 48 years in captivity, and more recently, sow 101 died in June 2020 at the age of 38. She had lived in Yellowstone Park from 1982 to 2002, but developed such a taste for garbage that rangers couldn’t keep her away from human settlements. She was moved to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Centre permanently, but her compensation was living to a ripe old age.
Leave a Reply