Oh hi, Hey, it's that person with your exact same name that you wanted to follow on Instagram because you thought it'd be funny, but they never approved your follow request. Ali Ward back with an episode of Ologies you have begged me for? You've pleaded with me Bears, Bears do bears?
Do bears? What's wrong with you? Do bears? And it has been a few years in the making because bear scientists are busy people people, and I had the wonderful doctor ray Wyn Grant on deck, but the pandemic, she started doing fieldwork, and then I started meeting more and more bear biologists and I didn't know what to do because they were all great. And then this bear guy happened to be available. I jumped at the chance to chat bruins with him. And Patrons, thank you so so
much for supporting the show. You can join Patreon for as little as a dollar a month. Patrons sent in almost five hundred questions for this one, which we couldn't possibly have gotten through in one episode, so surprise for everyone, there was going to be another with even more personologists, so sit tight for that. But before we meet this episode's ologists, and thank you also to everyone who rates
and subscribes to Ologies. It means so much. It honestly keeps this podcast in front of so many other ears and eyeballs, and I read every single one, and then I thank someone who has recently left a review this week, such as Justin vick who said the back catalog of Bologies held great promise. So I started the Volcanology episode and haven't looked back. As of tonight, I've caught up on all the old episodes, leaving me both satisfied and
disappointed that I'll have to wait for new episodes. Ologies shares the work of so many cool people and interesting topics while always being fun, engaging, accessible, and progressive. Thanks Ali and all the Ologists. Justin Vickay, thank you for the review. Also, if you have listened to Volcanology, Jess Phoenix has a new book that just came out called Misadventures My Wild Explorations in Science, Lava and Life, and I just thought I would plug that because she's great,
So if you listen to Volcanology, get her book. Okay, buckle up for Bears. So Ersenology comes from Ursus Latin for bear. In Greek it's arctus, so if that's right, Arctus. The Arctic has bears, Antarctica does not. I will never be the same after learning this week. So this ologist who what a get? So not only is his voice just butter in your ears, which doesn't really make sense, but it's good. The dude also just loves bears so much.
He studied conservation management in Farmborough in the UK, got a bachelor's in applied ecology, a master's in advanced ecology, and has studied all kinds of forest critters, but his heart is all about versus. So he co founded the Grizzly Bear Outreach Project, which is now the Western Wildlife Outreach Organization, and he is the executive director of Wildlife Media, which is a nonprofit production company. He's done research and
education on every continent where bears exist. He's talked about bears hosting programs for PBS, BBC, Discover and more. He also hosts a very good, highly acclaimed and respectable podcast called The Wild with Chris Morgan. And we recorded this episode a month or so ago, but I've been sitting on it because The Wild's new season debut today. So sit tight and learn about how many bear species there are.
What happens during hibernation, Panda poops, milking of Grizzly weird, Teddy bear trivia, How to read a bear's behavior, camping and hiking safety tips, California Grizzlies. Of your cute ears, why are they so cute? Soft fur? And the absolute majesty of winter bear butts with bear friend and world renowned ersenologist Chris Morgan. I'm so stressed out about this, I can't even tell you. Boy, the most stressful interview. I have never had so many questions about bears.
Thanks really lovely to hear.
I don't know how I'm going to get to all them. It's like those game shows where you have to go shopping in like under a minute. The clock is ticking. And first thing I always have people do up top, you could say your first and last name, and also what pronouns you use.
Yes, it's Chris Morgan and he.
Him cool and now you are an erthenologist correct.
Yes, I guess I am.
Yes, Yes, I have a feeling you do not use that word very often.
Not really. No. I was thinking about that before the call, and it is. Yeah, it's a strange word that you don't hear much in the world of bear biology and conservation. But it makes total sense.
And you're a bear biologist and a conservationist slightly more syllables than arsenologist, but you're a person who studies bears.
Yes, I've done quite a bit of studying of bears, and I'm part of a community of people around the world that actually focus their lives on these creatures. So it's a pretty interesting group of folks, these ersenologists or bear experts or bear biologists. And you know, some of us are outreach and educators and born from science, and others are the hardcore sort of field work research biologists that focus every day of their lives doing that stuff.
And I've dabbled in just about all of it. My whole life is about bears and appreciating them, understanding them, telling stories about them, having people sort of relate to them in some ways, and maybe even learn about themselves in the process.
Well, speaking about the humans involved. What is a gathering of bear people like? Good? What's the vibe?
There can be a lot of ego in the room, you know, these big creatures. It would be a very interesting task, actually to interview lots of different bar biologists from various parts of the world and ask them why they got into it, And I'm sure there's as many different reasons as there are bear biologists. Some of it is just born of the fact that these creatures are so incredibly big, impressive and physical. There's a presence about them.
Another aspect is their high intelligence. Another aspect is their conservation value. By protecting them, you protect all kinds of other species. And so for different people, it's maybe different reasons. And some people slip into it by mistake like I did, and other people sort of focused their entire you know, life, from day one on these creatures because perhaps they were born into it, by their parents being into it, or so. It's always an interesting mix of people at these gatherings.
In fact, there are there's an organization called the International Snociation for Bear Research and Management, and it's made up a few years ago at least, it was made up of about six hundred bear biologists around the world, so it's a big community and each of them studying various aspects of their own bear species, from India to the
Arctic and South America to Russia, you know. So we have these bear conferences and there's a lot of drinking and a lot of bear stories as you can imagine, and a lot of science shared and a lot of enthusiasm. And then there's certain little cliques and you know, the last biologists bear biologists stick together a bit more. There's the grizzly corner. You know, there's the black bears that are not quite up to being a grizzly bear, but you know it's really interesting dynamics.
Yeah, well, speaking of that, I understand that there's not that many bear species in nature, is or something like seven?
Are there?
Way more?
No, there's eight bear species. That's it. It's a nice little tidy package of It's a family of animal called urcids, and so there's only eight of them around the world. So I've always I always feel like it makes it quite manageable, quite understandable. Like way back in history talking a hundred years, you know, when nomenclature was really taking hold.
Nomenclature. Is that a regime or was it a war? It took me a minute, but I realized it's nomenclature. So yes, at the start of binomial nomenclature of genus and species and.
Such, it was thought that there were dozens, perhaps even hundreds of different bear species, but that's sort of condensed. They've been clumped a bit more. You know, you get your splitters and clumpers when it comes to these Latin names for different bear species, and like, for example, brown bears. Some of the biggest bears in fact, if not the biggest bears in the world, are brown bears coastal Alaskan brown bears and those found in that part of the
world and the equivalent over income Chatka in Alaska. These big fish eating brown bears that get to colossal I always think like dinas or prehistoric proportions. Some of them, the biggest can be eighteen nineteen hundred pounds when they go into their dens. Right, that's a brown bear. That's Ursus arctus. It doesn't get more bear than Ursus arctus. You know. Ursus arctus literally means bear bear, one in Latin and one in Greek. So you don't get more bear than Ursus arcus.
Right.
So these giant bears in Alaska same species as a brown bear in Italy in the Bitso's Mountains, where there are maybe two hundred and fifty pounds in weight, almost ten times less heavy than some of the bears in Alaska five times at least, you know.
So, yes, those nineteen hundred pound chalkers up in Alaska and then the two hundred and fifty pound Italian alps burrinos across the globe.
Same species though ursus arcs. These bear bears grizzlies, right, so I call them euro grizzlies. So you can see how this family of bears, even just within grizzlies were split ion to go into war. That's got a bit of different species to the one in Alaska. You know, Italian and Alaskan bears can't surely be the same, but they've clumped them more now into just these eight. So yeah, it's pretty interesting the history of them.
And how did they get to where they are. How did the range expand all over the globe I guess other than the Anarctic.
Yeah, yeah, they're found on four continents around the world. They're not found in Australia. Everyone always says, well, what about koalas, you know, distinctly muscle peels as you probably know, they're not in the bear family Kohala bears. So yeah, they are, and especially when it comes to brown bears,
they're one of the most widespread. They are the most widespread of the eight bear species, and you know, starting life in the Asian subcontinent and working their way to the New World across the Bearing land Bridge.
If you're secretly wondering where is the Bearing straight again, Well, it's the slim fifty five mile ocean corridor where Alaska almost touches Russia like two outstretched fingers on the Sistine
Chapel ceiling. Except during the Ice Age the sea levels were three hundred feet lower, and so there wasn't so much as a land bridge, but like a land promenade over which bears and humans and all manner of clever beast could just saunter over and freaking camels camels that evolved in North America and piece the fuck out and headed to the other direction. This historical region is called Berryingia, which, if you asked me, sounds a little too much like Basinca.
They became incredibly successful, incredibly diverse in their habits, and incredibly adaptable is the word, and it makes them my favorite species, the gristly bears, the one that I've looked into and worked with and around and being around most. I just think it's partly that these creatures are. Oh, they look at every day of their life with calculated risk and reward and memory and figuring out what they need to accomplish that that day and that week and
that month and that season in front of them. And there's some that they're so highly intelligent. They've become incredibly adaptable and successful as a bear species, and so they're the most widespread the brown grizzly bears. Brown and grizzly are the same species.
Okay, that was my next question because I was like, wait a second, You've called them grizzlies and brown So brown bear is a grizzly, but a black bear is not a grizzly, Is.
That right, right? Exactly? Yes, So we would call a grizzly a brown bear in Italy, right, So they're all under the umbrella of being a brown bear. Some of them are called grizzlies, and those are in North America. Those interior grizzly bears that we hear about, the famous Yellowstone bears, those are grizzlies interior or Alaska, those are grizzlies. Interestingly, though, even in North America, you start getting to the coast and people start referring to them as brown bears, but
the umbrella is brown bear. And then some brown bears are referred to as grizzlies, even though I joke about these these little Italian bears being like the Ureo grizzly.
You know, it's kind of like Americans have huge trucks, and then there are smart cars in Europe, like a Fiat still a car.
Everything is bigger over here in the spense. Yeah, yeah, so yes.
Grizzlies and brown bears and kodiak bears, they're all the same genus and species, but there are subspecies within them, including California's grizzly bear, which numbered over ten thousand before the discovery of gold nuggets in northern California in the mid eighteen hundreds, and by nineteen twenty four, every California grizzly bear had been hunted and killed, and a California grizzly with golden brown fur and that signature brown bear
shoulder hump still adorns are state flag as a reminder of how they came here and killed stuff. That's not true, but it kind of is, but just a reminder on a flag with no grizzlies. Can we fix that well. In twenty fourteen, the US Fish and Wildlife Service was on the receiving end of a plan to reintroduce grizzly bears to California, and they were like, oh, that's okay, we have black bears. We're fine. So bear in mind that the brown bear isn't the only species of bear.
Of course, there are seven other species, and you know they can sometimes I don't talk about them enough because they get so obsessed with the grizzlies, with the brown bears, you know, But the seven other species are found in really interesting places as well. So the species are up. Let's start in the North, the polar bears up there, grizzly brown bear that we've talked about, the American black bear,
spectacle bears in South America. They have these spectacle marks looked like eyeglasses, so they called spectacle bears down in South America and the Andes. The Asiatic black bear different to the North American black bears, so are found over in Asia. The sloth bear, and that's a long, shaggy coated bear that specializes in eating termites in places like India.
Interesting creatures. And then lastly the eight species and the smallest, interestingly enough, is the sun bear, and the sun bears are found in Borneo and south other places in southeastags Or I've seen them in Borneo and worked with some incredible people who are focused on sun bears there, and they're really tropical. So the cool thing about this range of these bears and where they're found is really the
fact that they could be found. I mean, think about it, polar bear in the highest reaches of our planet, in the most hostile environment in the Arctic that it's thriving. The best part of a polar bears year is the middle of the winter. Can you imagine that pitch dark up there, absolutely treacherously freezing conditions, And that's when they're at their best, and that's where they're up and at it.
That's where the hunting is best, you know. So you've got the polar bears up there at the same time as a bear and Borneo down in the tropics of Asia is scaling trees to eat figs. And these are the tiniest of bears, the smallest bear species. A big male might be a couple of hundred pounds or one hundred and fifty pounds, but they're really important because they help to manage and help this jungle, this rainforest home in Borneo thrive by spreading seeds, by telling the earth,
by representing most importantly that ecosystem, that rainforest. So and we can talk more about that. Because they're incredibly powerful as umbrella species, we call them right, you know, just being able to look at a bear like a sun bear in Borneo, say hey, if we protect that population of sun bears in Borneo, we protect everything it needs. Right, So you're automatically by default protecting that forest, and bears
are awesome at that, right. Every one of these species has a story to tell and a place to protect.
Ps. What is an umbrella species, So that is a species that needs a pretty big habitat. It might migrate or need a pretty wide territory, and preserving their habitat provides protection for a ton of other species. So this is not to be confused with a keystone species, which really defines an ecosystem, really holds it together by being there, and without a keystone species, things would start to be
thrown really off balanced. Now, an indicator species is one whose presence is a good sign things are going okay. Human beings probably not an indicator species tbh. But now let's move on to a hardball question, I think one that's on probably all of our minds, and as a bear biologist, do you get to hug any bears? Oh?
One of the best days of my life was doing just that I've not done. I've not done bear research per se myself in dens. I've not done denning bear research. But we joined a biologist back east for I was working on a series for PBS about our animal homes. Like, great, we got to do animals. So it was everything from bird nests to beaver lodges and lots of different species over the course of about three different different episodes, and I'm like, we've got to do bears. They're like pretty
obvious choice. Chris, Right, you're the bad guy, but I'm a bit biased, right, But I wanted this experience to get into a den with some bears, and so we went out to Maryland and literally crawled in with the biologists into this den. The bear was tranquilized, the female was tranquilized, and I got to pull out these four little cubs that were just born a matter of weeks beforehand,
and I was just absolutely heart, heart melting. I had them, you know, as as we were processing the female and radio coloring her and taking a blood sample and just checking on her health. The cubs, of course, are used to being a need to be with the female to keep warm. I mean it was snowing, freezing cold outside, middle of winter, course, and so it was my job to hold these black bear cubs in my jacket while we process the female. Just purple eyes looking at me
and just like hi, are you? Are you my new mom? It was the sweetest, sweetest thing. It'll stick with me forever. So yeah, crawling into those sorts of dens and having that kind of experience is amazing. Thinking about what those bears, what those bears are going through, and how they accomplish that, and hibernation is in bears is such an interesting thing. Well, can you imagine being a creature that big? I mean we're about as big as a black bear, right.
How big is a black bear? So smaller than a brown bear, with females around one hundred and fifty pounds and males topping out usually around two fifty, about the size of an English mastiff, which is a very large doc. But there are outliers who have topped eight hundred pounds, which is huge for a black bear, and one gentle giant black bear named Duffy weighed six hundred and ninety pounds and then lost over four hundred pounds in a winter, just snoozing himself scrawny.
So you imagine just saying, you know, October comes round and just going well, it's kind of cold, a little bit difficult to find food. I think you might just sleep for six months. It's incredible, isn't it.
I can't imagine. I can imagine very well too well.
In fact, you yeah, nice, long six months nap. Yeah, see ya.
Well, I have a question about getting into it. The world would be overrun with ersenologists if there was a promise that one day, even for fifteen minutes, you got to snuggle a baby bear. I think you're right, But what kind of got you toward this path? Was there a specific species or an experience that you had that really kind of lit that fire in you?
Yeah, definitely one. Really. Sometimes it's an evolution, isn't it, And an interest grows, and oftentimes it's like an intersection and you go left or right, or you bump into something or someone and for me, it was definitely that. And I'm from England originally. I've lived in the States twenty three years. But before I emigrated to the States, years before that, I was I'm fifty two now, so I was eighteen years old and wanted to come to the States and experience the wilderness of the place.
You know.
I always say that I think I was born with a very strong nature gene I like to call it, and I think everyone's born with a nature gene to some extent, but I think society sort of whittles it out of us and chips around at the edges of a nature gene to the point where people and young kids think, oh, I can't make a living out of it, or I can't you know, I can't survive by just having a nature gene, and perhaps they're teased at school.
You know. We're often loners, we're often introverts. We're often people who just want to be out in the woods, turning over rocks and stones and looking for insects and stuff. Right, So I had all that about me and the depth of sort of love for wildlife, but I'd always dreamt
of going to the States. So when I was eighteen, I came and worked on a summer camp in New Hampshire, like a wildlife conservation summer camp, and it was amazing all these young kids all there to learn about wildlife and about how to wildlife management and even hunting and other things, you know, bush skills, bushcraft and backcountry survival and things like that, and I loved it. So I came over as a summer camp counselor from England and we'd have these guests come through once in a while
to talk to the kids about wildlife. And one week it was a moose biologist and this woman came in to talk about her moose research, and then it was a chiat biologist and these were all interesting, but didn't you know, for some reason grab me like the next guy did, because he came in talking about black bears and I just literally remember my jaw dropping everything he
was saying. Fascinated by him. The fact that this guy was studying bears and making it a living and he knew thing that he did about these creatures was something in the moment of meeting him and hearing about him his work talking to these kids that just really grabbed me. So I ended up asking him for about three weeks if I could join him in the field. I wanted to go and experience what he was doing. He was
catching the local bears and radio collaring them. And after about three weeks, I think he was just sick of hearing, you know, being annoyed by me, you know, So he came to the summer camp picked me up and one night it was it was weird. It's like nine o'clock at night, ten o'clock at night, even it was dark. It was it was about August. It must have been
jumped on his truck. And we drove out the summer camp and you know, it's a left to the left turn to the forest where you presume all the bears are, and a right turn to town. And he turned right. I'm like, where we go? And I thought we were going into the field and he said, yeah, we are. These are my study animals down here. We got into
town and he pulled up at the garbage dump. And at his garbage dump, there were fourteen black bears sitting on this giant pile of garbage, like moonlight shining down on them. You didn't even need a flash. It was the most aside from like the halacious stink. It's like, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen on life. So I want to do what this guy's doing. And we hadn't even done anything yet. Just seeing these bears, I was like, that is I just couldn't believe someone
could do that with their life. And so it represented adventure, excitement, wildness, intrigue about these curious, smart animals and this smart guy that i'd met. I'm like, wow, this guy is, you know, probably one of the more intelligent people I've ever met as an eighteen year old kid. And he's focused on this one animal and that's where his knowledge begins and ends. And it was amazing to me for lots of different reasons.
And so after that, I came home to England after a summer of life experiences like that, and well, back to the garbage dump. We ended up tranquilizing bears on this garbage dump. He would take potshots with tranquilizer rifle. They'd go to sleep and he's like, okay, go chase that bear. Because the dart had a tranquilizer and a signal a transmitter in it. So he would shoot the
rear end of this bear with a tranquilizer dart. It would disappear into the brush and I'd have to go off charging after it and make sure we found where the bear was before it disappeared out of range. And you know, I just remember standing in the middle of this garbage dump and I couldn't find this bear. It was my first one that I'd ever chased. And suddenly went really quiet, and I don't know where it had gone.
It was pitch dark. I had a headlampond and then suddenly among the garbage, just a few feet away from him, I'd just hear this, Oh, and it was one of the bears that he tranquilized. He was right there asleep. So the whole thing blew me away. And I came back from England and slowly started to figure out where bears were. Do I have to go to New Hampshire for this to where are they? So like? I had no idea, and then ken to find out they were in Spain. They were in two or three euro grizzlies
brown bears in France. There were these fifty or sixty in Italy. So there was some kind of on my doorstep near England, and I made it my life's work to get to know them, and that's kind of where the journey in the bear world began.
Did you ever keep in touch with that bear biologist?
You know? I didn't. I think about it all the time. I didn't, and I'm dying too. It wouldn't be amazing to just pick up the phone and try and find him. I tried to find him about what ten years ago because I want to thank him for the path that he'd set me on, and just that level of influence in your life is powerful. I think about it and him all the time. Actually, you know, but I've never tracked him down, but I will.
Okay. I did a little digging and it seems that the bear guy in New Hampshire is doctor Andy Timmins. And I discovered this by googling bears plus dumpsters plus New Hampshire. Also, I found out on April fifteenth he's leading a seminar about the state of New Hampshire bears and human wildlife interactions. I eat bears and garbage. Now.
The best news is that it's over zoom and I'm going to post the link on my website in case you'd like to join from your own quarantine den in hibernation pajamas still, And can you explain to me a little bit about what a bear's yearly kind of cycle is like, because hibernation completely blows my mind. But I also don't know. I hear bear biologists referred to as carnivore ecologists sometimes, but I don't even know if bears are carnivores or if their apex predators. Like how are
they eating and sleeping? You ask a lot of questions.
Yeah, so they are carnivores, but they are a lot of them not very carnivorous, if you see what I mean. So they're officially in the carnivore group of animals, but a lot of their diet is vegetation. So grizzlies, for example, some parts of the world bear eats like ninety percent vegetation and only ten percent meat. And then if you get to places like coastal Alaska, I spend a lot of time literally sitting among grizzly bears there watching them
feed on salmon. The salmon in that part of the world becomes a huge part of their diet, and so you know, there's the carnivore coming out of them. Some grizzlies will eat elk, some eat deer that have been killed by avalanches. They're not essentially really good at chasing down big fast prey like elk and deer, but they're happy to clean them up when they find them, you know.
So that's where the carnival comes in. They're kind of opportunistic carnivores, meaning that if there's a meaty mealed around, oh my god, of course I'm going to take it because the metabolism benefits from it. So in the case of a grizzly or a black bear, you know, they basically spend their entire life just thinking the two things. One is food and one is sex.
Chris says, perhaps that's why bears are so relatable. Just snacking, loving cuddling, plus all you can eat salmon sushi and boning seasonal depression naps and eating literal garbage who's never been there right.
Constantly sort of just driven by their stomachs and constantly trying to find the maximum number of calories for the minimum amount of effort. And they do that in a very intense way because they've only got six or eight months to do it. In during the spring, summer and early fall, when they're out of hibernation. They're basically preparing themselves every year to go into hibernation. So they need enough fat to see them through a winter, which is
when they recycle. They recycle their fat into urea and they don't defecate, they don't urinate. They basically they recycle all of their bodily fluids and fat in order to stay and survive in the winter den, avoiding the lean times of food. So you could see why summer and fall is so important to them, like I've got to get fat, got to get fat, got to get through
the winter. And in the case of a female bear, it's really important for them to be in shape by the time they go into the dea because that's when the cubs appear. So the cubs that we were checking out in Maryland and the den that was in February, just before they were about to emerge March April they emerge from the den, but they had just been born in like January, in that winter den with the female
you know, incredible story in itself. You know, a female bear basically you know, just pops out a little bear cub. It's the size of or smaller and same weight as a squirrel. It's hairless, it's blind, it's helpless. It finds the warmth of its mother's teeth and latches on and drinks some of the richest milk in the animal kingdom and grows like a weed.
Side note, how do they know that? Well, I just read a study about obtaining bear milk and it's done by tranquilizing the bear and giving it an oxytocin injection and then quote manual expression. There's also a company, Grizzlymilk dot com that claims to sell handharvested montana grizzly milk, and from what I can tell, it's not a real com. But speaking of debunkable flim flammery, when mama is giving birth, she is not pasted out cold and surprised to see
kids that look like her. When she wakes up in the spring, it's not like draw on your face with Sharpie's when did I have this baby? Kind of sleep.
And then they pop out of their dens in March or April and I'm like, wow, okay, into the outside world. So the whole cycle is based on you know, eating, finding a mate, and for the females giving birth to the cubs and making sure that they're in a fit enough state through each of those seasons to survive and
thrive and do those things right and to procreate. And for a bet, it's all about calculated decisions, you know, about where the food is at any time a year, whether it's up in the high mountains or down in the valley bottoms or a range of both. Rights. So a lot of them will start feeding in the valley bottoms in spring, and they a lot of plants start gorging on things like obscure plants, like like horsetail, and you know, a horsetail being the equiscetum plant, you know,
one of the oldest plants in the world. That's one of their favorite things in spring and then the woody it is when it gets old. But in the spring, when it's really sort of fresh and delicate, they go for it.
Horsetails side note are those plants that look like a bunch of tiny bamboo and bears also love to munch sedges, which are tofted, grassy looking marsh plants. It's kind of like bellying up to and all you can eat salad bar for them.
And the same with sedges. You watch grizzly bears in the sedge meadows of Alaska. I've done this a lot, and they literally look like sometimes you'll see a herd of a herd, what looks like a herd of bears, twenty of them strong in a meadow and they're all just grazing these sedges because they're packed full of protein, and that's what they want when they come out of
their dens. And then as the plants start to evolve and grow and emerge further up the mountain slopes, and the bears will follow them on this kind of elevational migration, which is such a cool thought. And then they come back down as things start to emerge down in the valley bottoms again. And then in the case of Alaska, the salmon come in in July and then even more at the end of August, and the bears know it. So you can sit there in Oh, it's just amazing places.
I took a small group of people to Alaska a few years ago. I do a lot of expedition guiding, and so there's this small group, four or five people, and I said to them, I wanted to show you these bears and the way they behaved during the salmon season. So I went up to this river and I said, we're all going to sit here. It was about six or seven feet away from the river bank. The water is right there, no fish around, no bear around, no
bears around. And so everybody's saying, great, okay, yeah, this looks okay, But why don't we sit on the river bank, like our feet dangling over the edge of the river bank. I'm like, no, you'll see why. And so we sat six feet from the edge of the river bank and suddenly the tide changes, the water starts to come in, and you can imagine it. There's beautiful clear water coming up through the willows and mountains, no capped all around.
It's the most mind blowing, like primal setting. The tide changes, the sea starts to bring in fish. And these fish, soke in this case, are coming in and silver salmon coming in and into the shallow water to spawn up river. And as they do, you can hear them scuttling through the water, and the bears hear them too, So the bears start coming out of the forest. So these people I'm with are like, oh my god, there's the fish,
and like, oh my god, there's the bears. Literally immediately the bears start to come out because they know the tiders changed and the fish are coming in. And before you know it, this giant female and her three cubs walk by right on the river bank, five feet away from us, and she stashes her cubs, which are just cubs of that year, so the smallest cuters variety, stashes them right there next to us while she goes fishing,
and so there she is tuned into these fish. She's seen enough, not many, but enough humans to know that we're not a threat, and in fact to know that we can actually defend and protect her cubs from males which are sometimes going to come in and be aggressive towards the cubs because the males are more nervous of people. So this bear has been around, she's processed almost year after years. She knows where the salminar, she knows what
to listen to when they're coming up the river. She knows she stashes her cubs on the bank next to some Homo sapiens and they'll probably be okay while she fishes, because she's trying to replenish her fat stores that she's lost over the winter. There's like a thousand things going on at once. Sorry, I got a bit hyperactive talking about this stuff. I love it. It's just it's the
coolest sensation. And you feel like you're set a stepping back in time in a place like this into their annual lives, into their seasons and their their thought processes, and it really it recalibrates you. You know. Another point, this bear comes by and stands on the river bank, and the people on with are freaking out by this point, a little bit quietly because I've told them to sit
quietly and everything's going to be okay. And I'm watching a monitor in the behavior of all these bears, and we're surrounded by six, seven, eight of them now, and one of them stands at the river bank in front of us, literally stands up grabs its fish that it's got between its paws.
He's talking about a bear and not a person.
Grabs its fish and stands up on its rear legs, and now at this point it's looking over us, and a couple of the people like, oh my god, is he going to attack? And might No, bears don't attack when they're standing up. He's just looking at a bear behind us. And this place in Alaska is like they're literally looking through you as humans. They're not interested in you, they don't perceive you as a threat. You're kind of a neutral entity, and it's the other bears that they're
interested and curious about. So it's this big sort of game of chess going on in this place where they all know the limits of each other and the dangers and how to avoid them and how to avoid physical confrontation. And we're just a tiny part of that chess game where they actually use us to their advantage at some In some cases, you know, the most wonderful connecting thing. You know, you're not thinking about email and text while you're in.
I can't. I've never seen one in the wild, but I think a lot of us when we hear about bears in the wild, we think what do I freeze? Do I yell? Do I make myself bigger? Do I run away? And I'm realized I wrote just a list of questions that I had for you, and then I have a bunch from listeners as well. One of the questions I wrote down, which I didn't even realize I typed it until right now, is just have any bears eaten you? What kind of questions.
Have you ever been killed by a bear? Yet?
You ever been devoured and mauled by a bear to death?
And you know a lot of people have asked me if I've ever been attacked, and you know it. I guess it begs the question, doesn't it? But no, no, never I've been charged. I've been treed.
Did I look up the word treed? Indeed? Because I pictured Chris being forced to scramble up a tree and high just out of reach as a bear tried to swipe its closet. Is But but bears can very easily climb trees, so that's not a good escape. And it turns out that to be treed means to be cornered and forced to face one's attackers. And this can happen with or without an exasperated tuba sound.
I've been very close to aggressive bears, not intentionally. I don't have some death wish. I'm always very respectful and want to keep my distance and take lots of precautions. The thing about bears and being as smart as they are, there's lots you can do, lots you can do to avoid getting into trouble with them, and they appreciate it. More than you do, almost because they don't want confrontations.
They're born into this bear society of avoiding those types of confrontations with each other, because you think about it, if you've got an eight hundred pound grizzly bear or brown bear that is aggressive and cantankerous, and it can do a lot of damage a creature that big, and so bears have learned this sort of body language around
avoiding conflict. It's really interesting and sometimes I think about it when I'm watching humans, you know, sitting on a bus or a train or walking down the street, and we're all just basic mammals underneath this exterior, right, I think we've become a bit full of ourselves because really we're just these basic creatures and some of the same body languages, you know, like looking out the corner of your eye, or pretending not to look at somebody when
you are or maybe walking sideways, or lowering your head when you're in front of somebody because you don't I'm tall. I'm six four, so I'm constantly lower on my head and trying to not look too overwhelming to people that are less tall than I am. And there's all kinds of things that we're doing all the time, and the bears are doing it too, and they've figured out how to avoid conflict in that way, and so it's easy to stay out of trouble with them.
You know.
In the case of grizzlies, keep making lots of noise as you're walking down trails. They hate surprises some of some situations you can't avoid. In this one situation, remember I was on the coast of Alaska and it was breeding season, so it was about June. And around the corner comes this big brown female and beautiful, prime of life. But she's running and looking over her shoulder and my, uh oh, something's behind her. And you always wonder what
it is that's coming towards you. It's clearly a bigger bear that she's afraid of. So sure enough, around the bend comes this boyfriend want to be, this big male three times her size, you know, this sexual dimorphism is huge in these bare species. He chases her around the bend. She sees us there and she's a little bit startled, part startled, part relieved. She runs behind us and sits down about fifteen feet behind us.
Can you imagine a five hundred pound bear tries to use you as a cock block from an even bigger, fairy, horny bear.
And again she's using us as cover from this big, marauding male that wants to mate with her, and she's not ready for it. She might not be an eastrous yet or partially an eastress, but not receptive to him yet. And he's following her until she does start to ovulate, and and he's going to be ready. So he sees her behind us and us in between, and you know, he's like, what are you doing? This is this is? This is my target? This is this is this is the female that I want. I'm pursuing. What are you
doing there? And I could just tell he was getting anxious and started to duw pop, which is this kind of sound. And then the next stage is a sign of anxiety. And then the next stage of that anxiety in a bear is salivating, and he was salivating profusely, and then bam, like a bullet out of a gun just charges right at us and stops just a few feet away from us. And that's called the bluff charge, right, But it's a stupid name for it because it's not a bluff. It's as real as it gets that charge.
It's a bluff attack, really, is what it is. So he didn't attack, but he's charging to give us a very clear message, and you know, talk him down. It's okay, it's okay, bear, it's okay. You know, we mean no harm. You know, just talking calmly to him and to yourself to calm the situation down. And he backed up a little bit and realized he had the upper hand and just walked around us, by which time she looks at us and goes, okay, here we go again, and she
starts running again, and off they go. You know, so every situation is different, every bear is different, but it is quite easy if you know a few rules of their game to stay safe in bear country.
And is it a myth? I picture? If you're camping, just any time in the middle of the night, a bear will come into your tent looking for like a cliff bar. Does that happen?
It does? Okay, it does. Yes, it's not a myth. In fact, they'll come into your tent looking for a piece of candy or toothpastetore.
Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. My dog is sneezing. Is that a dog dozing?
He's allergic to bears.
Something's in her, shooner, what you got of there? She looks she's like a small poodle shitsu mutt, and she looks kind of like a gray bear cub and she's the cutest of her. But she's just been napping and she.
Oh that is that is sweet? You know, dogs have a real interesting reaction to to bears. They can get you into trouble to start with, because they run off down a trail in front of you and sometimes bring a bear back, like chasing it. The other thing I've noticed, I'm surrounded by bear skulls in my house, you know, skulls from various bears that have died. And if I take if we don't have a dog, but we have
lots of friends who have them. If if a friend with a dog comes over, I'll take one of those skulls and just open up its mouth just a couple of inches and it's big canine teeth show. And every dog I've ever seen a mana how big or small, they's just like completely recoil. They're like primarily afraid of that skull and what it represents. It's very interesting. Yeah, So dog was hearing the bear stories.
Yeah, I love it so yes, pardon that sneeze distraction. Also, I googled dogs plus bears and I must relay that. In twenty eighteen, a family just outside of Kung Ming, China, adopted a Tibetan mastiff puppy while on vacation, and it was so hungry. The little puppy ate two buckets of noodles and a bunch of fruit in a sitting pretty much every day. And after two years, this Tibetan mastiff
was two hundred and fifty pounds. But when it started walking on its hind legs, the family was like, oh, maybe this is a bear, and then the critter was yes, a bear, an Asiatic black bear, and it's now living
at the Yunan Wildlife Rescue Center. Also, if you see a bear in the wild acting more like a Tibetan mastiff and just approaching people for snuggles, as some have been spotted doing in California in recent years, definitely do not snuggle it and rather call wildlife personnel because no, sadly, you're not just cosmically soul bonded with a friendly bear. There have been a rash of encephal life cases and some sort of unidentified neurological disease that these poor friendly
California bears have developed. They're still figuring it out. Anyway, back to camping and bear's sense of smell, which is intense, intense. So there might be like some tasty Tom's of Maine or something in your cosmetics bag and it'll be like m dinner.
Yes, yeah, they they are definitely attracted to any unusual smell, even the smell of plastics or petroleum based products lipsal in your pocket. So whenever you're camping, you definitely make sure you don't have anything stinky or even slightly scented in your tent. It is a risk, and they occasionally do come sniffing around. Now, the idea of a bear attacking you to get to that food and injuring you or killing you, that's a very very rare thing.
Okay, but how rare like a thousand people a year in the US. What are we talking?
A few years ago? The stats who are North America wide, there's one two deaths per one or two best deaths per year in North America from both species of black and grizzly bear combined, and ten to fifteen serious injuries. That was a few years ago, and I'd be surprised if it's changed. So statistics so not much at all, considering there's a close to a million black bears in North America. There's probably thirty five thousand brown grizzly bears
in North America, most of those in Alaska. And you know, look at the number of people and the number of people that are spending time in bear country and camping and recreating. It's growing all the time, and I don't know, I think part of it with these creatures, it's fascinating and amazing to me that they don't do more damage when they are so capable of it. Same with mountain lions, cougars, you know, same with same with a lot of these species, woolves.
They are equipped to do damage to humans, and they select and decide not to. You know, part of that is natural selection, and you know, those that are surviving and still walking the landscape, but perhaps the show higher individuals, you know, because over many generations they've become that way. You know, they've had to. But yeah, they they would choose to stay out of trouble more more than they would to get into it. But every bear is different.
If you sat in a room with twenty bears and you sat in a room with twenty humans, all those those twenty bears would be as different in personalities as the twenty humans would be. Just they're that smart, they're that different, they're that individualistic.
When was the last time you cried about a bear?
This morning was really that's a really nice question. Oh, I don't know. I'm easy. I'm one of them. I'm an easy crier. I cried pretty recently about our North Cascades bears. I so probably four months ago, five months ago. These guys here are so the North Cascades of the mountains here ending Washington State where I live, and there's maybe three or four grizzly bears left. That's it. And they you know, they've been here for thousands of years.
They have a right to be here. They have a past and just about a present here, but their future is totally in question. You know, they need help or they'll blip out into with blivion. And they may have already blipped out into extinction here in the North Cascades. We don't know. There's a few on the Canadian side of the border. There's a few on our side and
they need help. And to me, if we can't help a creature like a grizzly bear in this ten thousand square miles of wilderness, in a place like this, it's that wild and that inaccessible and mountainous that we don't need for farming, we don't need for recreation, all of it. We don't if we can't share a place like that,
I think as much as the bears themselves. That's what gets to me, you know, It's like, oh, because I do think if we can, if we can coexist with grizzlies, you could co exist with anything, right, and perhaps even with each other.
That's a beautiful sentiment. What do you think a person can do that might be able to help. It's so good to know that there are people who study this. They care so much, you.
Know, there are a lot of people that do, you know, and that's what gives me hope. Part of my work is trying to relay these stories to others, though, because a lot of scientists don't do it very much. Thank God for people like you that are getting science out there to huge audiences. And we need more of it,
don't we. Otherwise science can sit on shelves and collect dust and PhD dissertations, and scientists aren't always the people that want to be out there on the front line, you know, getting attention and raising issues, and you know they're often happier in the field they're in a lab or. It's so important, isn't it.
So?
I think people finding out even who their local biologists are and what they're studying and why. And in the case of bad there's bear organizations. We've got a little nonprofit organization called Wildlife Media. We made a bear film a few years ago that followed my journey around the world to Borneo, to the sun bears, to Alaska's brown bears, to Peru's spectacle bears, and to the polar bears of Northern Canada. So four locations, and I did it on
the back of my motorcycle. I liked to ride a motorbike. I've been preparing for my bike trip for the last five years. But in many ways, my journey started long ago, and this film followed me around to these different locations and we found these amazing bear heroes in each of these places for each of these bear species. And then the proceeds from the film and donations from domes that
had made the film possible. We gave it all to the people that were doing the work on the ground that were in the film, and so it felt really good. So we created a little nonprofit called Wildlife Media that was designed to do that and still is doing that. It's creating stories and supporting science and scientists and especially young people, you know, encouraging, encouraging those people with the nature gene that they feel might sort of be witted a way to keep it and go for it and
make it part of their lives, you know. And we're at that stage, aren't we. We've everyone's got a role, and you know it kind of is frustrating when you hear, oh, it's up to the next generation, they'll save us. No, it's up to whichever generation you're in. Each of us has to do it. Whether you are a hundred or whether you're eight years old, doesn't matter. Each of us can play a role to solve some of the planet's problems and whatever that means. If you've got money, donate money.
If you've got time, volunteer and donate your time. If you've got intellect and smart then offer that. If you're an accountant, do some accounting for a bear biologist. Right, if everyone can weigh in protecting big, beautiful animals and nature can ultimately ends up protecting us all. I'm obsessed with bears. I do it as much of people as ilieve, as I do for bears, because by protecting these big ecosystems, these ten thousand square mile chunks of the world that
bears need to thrive and exist. You know, we're protecting clean water, fresh air, natural resources, the trees that breathe out, the oxygen that we breathe in. Right, really basic fundamental stuff like I always think even climate change. You know, I'm on this jag at the moment to really sort of try and help position the natural world's biodiversity can save us from climate change. Right by protecting these vast areas,
we're protecting forests. You know, something like twenty five percent of the warming effect by human beings is because of deforestation. So imagine protecting a forest in Italy or Alaska for a bear population. Suddenly you're protecting the forest that we all need, and you're reducing carbon and all the rest of it.
Can I ask you for your questions from listeners. Yes, oh my gosh you oh okay. Literally, I put up a call for questions. Four hundred and seventy eight questions overnight came in wold, okay. But before your questions, let's give some monies to some bears. So the bonus episode is coming out with all of the other wonderful bear biologists that'll be out this week, but we're giving to
several causes for that. But for this episode, it's going to Wildlifemedia dot org, which was established to create the movie Bear Trak with Chris, and it's a nonprofit dedicated to telling inspiring and impactful stories about wildlife and conservation and supports emerging and established individuals in the field, including scientists and filmmakers and conservationists. You can check out Wildlifemedia dot orgs documentaries Bear Track and Ocean Souls about Cetaceans,
and Chris's podcast The Wild with Chris Morgan. Chris also told me that, according to his back of the Envelope math, protecting the eight bear species of the world would be protecting one third of the Earth's land service, and he says his dream is to protect a million square miles of bear habitat in an international bear park for each of the eight bear species. So it's exciting to support
that kind of vision made possible by the following sponsors. Okay, this first question was on the minds of many patrons, including Laurent dubergh Lass, Katie Bauer, Matt Simo, Bailey Griffin, Adam Weaver, first time question asker Taylor Emily Roth, Felix Besper Holly, first time question asker Daniel Bellend, Ned Lansing, Ashley Herbal, as well as Jasmine Monreal and Rainy Day both asked why bear so cute? If so mean, I just want to squish. If bears are so dangerous, why
are they so cute? Why are they both?
I think I followed that, Yeah, I just want to squish. That's great, isn't it right? We've kind of run that gamut in the conversation already, from like these little cubs that you just want to put in your jacket to you know, a bear you don't want the avenue tent or on a trail. It's okay, It's a great question because I think it answers why bears are so prevalent in the human mindset. Right, you know, we're always society, culture, you know, through art, stories, fables, mythology, you know, the
naming of stars. Right, bears have always been there since the days of us sitting around a fire in a cave. And maybe it's because of that, right, because that, my god, irresistibly cute and you want to take them home to Oh my god, it could rip my head off if I don't do the right thing. So there's nothing boring about them either, end of that spectrum, it's a.
Very good point. Elizabeth Edwards, Mo Casey and a bunch of listeners Shyla Zinc, Miranda Halsey, Vincent, Alex Bauman, Andy c Miranda, Panda, Grace, Robis Show and b Wilson, who asked pandas? What's up with pandas? All of them want to know, in Elizabeth words, why are pandas? Shouldn't evolution have eliminated them by now? And Mo Casey wants to know, can you explain pandas? They seem too ridiculous and chaotic to be in the same family as grizzlies? So what's going on with pandas?
I love the way these are phrase, they seem what too chaotic?
What was it too ridiculous and.
Chaotic to be in the same family as grizzly I'd actually kind of agree with that. Do they really belong like next to the lineup of eight, next to a grizzly no I. Pandas are a bit of a they're a bit unusual. At one point, pandas weren't in the bear family, and then they were welcomed into the bear
family of eight. So they are firmly there now. And I'm glad they are because you know, they're found in these just a few mountain ranges in China, and they need help, and China's been pretty good at protecting them and getting the word out and raising them in captivity. And wow, there's a competition between a grizzly bear cub and a giant panda cub. I think the giant panda cubs are the most incredibly sweet creatures on earth, but
they are. They're a bit of a bit of a social outline around in the bat finally sitting around eating nothing but bamboo. I'm quite happy with it.
Yeah, just a side note about pandas, how many are there? There are fewer than two thousand giant pandas left in the wild but they're listed now is vulnerable instead of endangered, so that's good. And these carnivores do occasionally scoop up a rodent or a bird to eat, but yes, ninety nine percent of their diet is bamboo, and an adult panda I look this up can eat up to thirty pounds of food a day, and it's digestible because of a microbe that lives in its pretty short poop shoot
for a plant eater. Speaking of which, next time you need some first date low trivia, feel free to mention that pandas shit up to forty times a day and that their faces are so cute and round because they have wood gnashing jaw muscles. Also, their white and black fur helps them hide in the snow and in shadows. Hey, why are there ears something we want to softly bite on? Well, according to science, bears have little wee round ear flaps because the smaller the ears, the less heat they lose
from them. So you know, the Finnic fox huge ass ears lives in the Sahara desert. Those big sailboat ears help dissipate heat, so bears have the opposite. But both types of ears are so cute it makes me personally nauseated. I want to touch them so bad, but I won't.
I promise you know. I don't know about you, but I look at a creature like that sometimes and go, how is that even possible? How is that even possible? And also how is that possible on this one planet? Right? That we are here as Homo sapiens sharing this space, in time and in place with a creature like that, whether it's honestly a giant panda or an earthworms, it's
puzzling and it's just magical. It's just it's wondrous, isn't it that we do that we're sharing it in this period of time on this planet's history, with this variety of species. And I think that's what gets to me. It's like they deserve to exist, exit they deserve a place on this planet. They deserve to thrive. It's not all about us, my God.
Not about us. But when we do crash on a bear's couch aka go camping patrons such as first time question asker Sanny Lee and Anna Luna, who I accidentally just called Luna, had a question about if that's always such a bloody good idea, and we had a lot of folks, including someone named Luna, and Jeffrey Bradshaw, Derek Allen and Tyler Duggan, and Annie c who phrased it
this way. My asshole uncle, who likes to tell horrifying man versus nature stories, claims he saw a woman get dragged out of her tent by a bear and yellowstone because it could smell her menstruation. My uncle is a complete and utter dick, But I've wondered if this was a thing ever since he told my sister So and Luna asked about their moon and camping, and so is is that flim flam or? Is that real?
In terms of the menstruating women attraction by bears? It's not true in one degree. The risk is that pads and towels used by menstruating women smell of blood, and if they're not discarded off safely, can attract wild animals. But it's not an animal. It's not a bear saying that woman is menstruating therefore becomes a target and I'm attracted.
No, And so attacks don't happen just from like like a shark smelling blood in the water.
No, exactly, But if towels and byproducts of that menstruation are not dealt with. Just like other attractants of any sort, food or any other attractants or garbage or anything. Then it can bring bears in. And if there is ever a correlation, it's that.
Ah okay, good to know, also ever helpful. The Yellowstone National Park website has a whole page dedicated to refuting this flim flam, giving statistics on bear attacks which are very rare and how an even slimmer percentage of the people attacked. We're doing so during their lunar blood letting, So people who bleed, you'll be okay, probably, But treat your used goods like food and keep it ten feet above ground or in a lock box or a car, and pack out what you pack in, don't bury it.
And if your uncle is an asshole, tell him he's wrong. And also that the mask goes over the nose. Dude, I just have a feeling he's one of those guys. Anyway, let's change the subject. This is a very softball question in every sense of the word. Kristen needs to know which bear is the softest.
Oh, the softest fur, softest as into touch. Hmm, well, I haven't touched every species I've got to say I still still left to fondle. Let's say, the undefer of a grizzly is really the place to be. It's it's you know, they have these like three layers. The one against their skin is almost felty and thick, and then the next one is warm and fuzzy. You've got piles of it that I've found discarded on the in Alaska. I've got piles of it on various shelves around the house,
and I just love touching that stuff. And then the outside is this guard hair that sort of sheds the snow and the rain and keeps the sun out and keeps them warm and cool when they need to be. And so a bear's coat is a pretty special thing. But yeah, grizzly bears sort of underfur is a pretty nice, nice soft texture, that's for sure. And the cubs, oh my god, even more so.
Right, Yeah, cant even imagine. No, do you know much about the legend of Teddy Roosevelt making the Teddy Bear?
You know, I not a lot, but I do know that he had on much an opportunity to kill a bear in a hunt. And whether it's the legendary part of the story or truth. But he raised his rifle to the bear and decided not to so gave this bear a chance. And that's where the name Teddy came from in respect of his choice not to kill that bear, which is kind of nice, isn't it.
I did not know that. Fact check and yep. Russian born Brooklyn candy shop owner Morris Mitchum and his wife Rose heard the story. Rose made a stuffed bear and the rest is history. They ended up opening one of the largest toy companies in America. So there you have it, Teddy Bear. Question askers including Thomas en Wyndham, Natasha Barje, Ivy Scotia, Megan a Aloisa Froes, Earl of Gramlekin, Nicole Climb, and Katie Timothy Nicki, and first time question askers Mina
Craig Dowd, Hilali and Morgan Bechel. Okay, so that's answered. But who invented the Teddy roux bin? No one but me, asked, Well, I had to look it up and the creator of the late nineteen eighties talking singing toy bear was invented by a guy named Ken Force, whose previous work involved co founding Chuck E. Cheese, and engineering Disney's animatronic country bear Jan Burree and designing the Haunted Mansion, which, knowing
all of that, Teddy Rouxsbin makes so much more sense. Okay, speaking of kids stuff, the wonderful Greg Wallach, a listener asks, does a cub become a bear in their thirties or forties? When are they grown ups?
Awesome question. So a bear, a really old bear in the wild, will be twenty five. I think the oldest bear that's known in research right now in the wild, certainly in the lower forty eight States, is Bear three ninety nine. She's called her name is Bear three nine nine, and she's in Grand Titon National Park, Yellowstone, the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, So she's basically a Yellowstone bear, and she's
twenty four, and so she's really old. Bears don't get to be that old usually because we've either shot them or hit them with cars, or they've died from fights or even lightning strikes and natural causes, drownings as cubs, things like that. So she's a really old adult bear a cub, you know. Unfortunately, the first year or two of life, half of the cubs died just because of all these threats to them, you know, so it's a
tough life being a cub. By the time they're three or four years old as a gristly bear, that's when they're like, okay, mom, I'm out of here. They hit the teenage years, they're like t head out on my own and they become independent that three or four years old, and they might not get a chance. They can mate physiologically, but they might not get a chance to behaviorally until they get a bit older, bigger, meaner, decide to you know,
fight other dominant males or even the females. The competition between females for male attention is not uncommon where there's dense populations are bears. So yeah, three or four is kind of when they're in those young teenage years. And then, you know, an established, healthy dominant bear is usually sort of ten, eleven, twelve years old. And then by the time they're in their mid twenties, like three nine nine, they've usually especially the males, from fighting canines, broken off,
teeth worn down. They don't look like a healthy, happy bear anymore. You know, it's the slow demise. At that point. They can live longer in captivity, though when they've taken well care of.
Oh well, I didn't know that, okay. Side note, there are many instances of bears reaching forty in captivity, though if you google oldest bears you will mostly find obituaries. I accidentally learned about a thirty four year old male grizzly and yellowstone who was put down a few months ago after he was munching on calves a lot. So his name was one sixty eight, and he only had three little nubbins of rotten teeth left. But he was able to hunt baby cows by just gumming them to death,
which is kind of cute and ferocious. It's also impressive and makes me sad. Anyway, Rip won sixty eight, Kayla left. Kayla says I saw TikTok recently joking about how everyone thinks that hibernation was literally just sleep for several months, and everyone's like, wait, it's not so. During hibernation. Are there like intermissions where they get up? Is it like twilight sleep? Are they out?
Yeah, they're pretty much out when they're out, But they can also rouse themselves. Bess can rouse themselves from that winter sleep more than a truly deep hibernating creature like a ground squirrel, and they can come out to fend off danger, or some of them come out to even you know, maybe grab something to eat on a warm day.
But it really is a form of hibernation. And hibernation is really a spectrum right from the very deep sleep with kind of like humans, some of us sleep very deeply and others quite lightly, and bears are on the
lighter scale of that. But you know, their breath goes down to around one or two per minute, and their heart rate drops down to about five or six per minute, and they really sort of enter this incredibly efficient physiological state of being where they can sleep for that length of time, reprocess everything that they need and still survive and not urinate, not defecate, and just be ready to pop out once the spring emergence of plants that they
are waiting for comes out in the spring. Again. I mean, you couldn't make this stuff up, could you. It's crazy, Like even just describing it, I'm like, God, that's amazing. Yeah.
Well, this dovetails well with a question Arthur Apodaca asked. They wrote in Bear with Me and my ridiculous question, But do bears make their own butt plugs for winter hibernation, and Rica Putnam said, oh lord, imagine if someone else did it for them. But yes, is there some sort of nature's butt plug happening.
There is a nature's butt plug, and it's called it's even got a name. It's called a tappan. It's not like it's not the bear and sitting in his den going all right, I'm going to forge this tapping out of a clump of dry grass and you know, shove it where the sun don't shine. It's not that they're out eating a certain vegetation that when they go into the den actually becomes sort of plugged. So and the theory is that so that they're not defecating in the
den and it helps that process. So, yes, there is such a thing as a as a bear butt plug.
Oh wonderful to know. If you were to say, look at the ingredients list on the back of a tappen, you might see the words bark shed epithelial cells, undigested plant material, the bear's own hair, and some dried up
foot calluses. So, according to bears dot org, they have a page that wants you to know that this winter ass quirk is just the natural desiccation of stuffed parked in the colon for a while, and that when bears groom themselves, yeah, they eat their own hair and calluses a little bit on accident, maybe a little bit not so what you would too. Also, the tappin doesn't just
prevent midwinter pooping, it also keeps ants out. And yes, when spring springs and the blossoms start to bud and they awaken, they do their thing in the woods and they inject the tappin. But in order to pull off a David Blaine sitting in a room underground without eating or pooping for half the year stunt, they have to prep and patrons Eric kay Hope, Mary Beacon and Jesswan
had questions about the Battle of the the Docks. Kelly Phillips said, do you follow the National Park Services a Fat Bear week every totally?
Yes. In fact, I know those bears quite well because they're in a park, a national park. Thank Guard for these national parks, right, And this is a really special one cat My National Park in Alaska, and I've guided a lot there and observed the bears there and practically
lived among them for film projects over the years. And it's a really special place, and those are the bears that are feeding on the salmon I was talking about earlier on that get to these giant proportions, because when you think about it, they're losing sometimes a third or even up to a half of their body weight in the winter den and they regain that and most of that in the summer and form and most of that regaining of it is in the sort of midsummer to
late fall before denning. They get into this mode of excessive eating and it really puts them into this overdrive of feeding. The bears there during that fat bear week are just gorging on sokey sam. I mean, it's amazing. You can watch them eat in ten or twenty of these fish in the course of an hour. And each of these fish is five six seven pounds, you know, and they get to the point where they're eat in so many of those fish that they'll just choose, they
get very selective. They'll just choose to choose the most beneficial parts. So they'll they'll pull off the brain, they'll bite the brain off, and they'll strip the skin off these big beautiful salmon that you know that we pay thirty forty dollars for in a store and the file a'll just float off down the river. Not interested in the in the meat. They just want the brain full of protein and fat and the skin the same, you know, because they're okay, they're like they're full up, but they're like,
I still need more, still need more. I'm in overdrive. You know. It's it's called, oh my goodness, my brain has just slipped. What is it, excessive hypophagia, hyper feture, so excessive eating, you know, they go into that mode. And that's what those bears in Fat Week are right in the middle of where they they look like something out of a Disney cartoon where they can hardly you know, waddle or and fat happy bears. Thank goodness, they have places like that, you.
Know, And isn't it Alex Brown, first time question asker wants to know. Was that kind of a blubber that they put on.
Yeah, we wouldn't call it blubb but it's just a fat layer. And on some of them, you know, the rump fat layer on a bear can be six seven, eight, nine ten inches long on some of the big ones. And yeah, that's what they're born to do, is put that fat layer on every.
Year, oh last October's winter and Alaskan beautiful beast known as number seven four seven and the bear's bios are all hosted at explore dot org. And I have to tell you, scrolling through their before spring skinny pictures and their autumn afters where they're plump and ready for winter, some topping one thousand pounds, it's truly body positivity and a reminder that all animals are indeed extraordinary machines to be celebrated. Now, what if you encounter one of these
bears though? Will it be hungry for you? Rachel Moore and a few other people wanted to know if there are any useful rhymes or sayings to remember which bear you're supposed to cower and fear at, which you're supposed to yell at, just to give people a peace of mind.
That's a great question. I'm glad it was asked because you know the difference between various we've already established bears or all individuals, right, they're all completely different characters and personalities like humans. And there's even been scientific studies done. You know, in the scientific literature you can find words that describe certain bear personalities, like playful or joyous or angry or discontented or irritable or aggressive and violent, you know,
all the things that you might describe a human buyer. Right, So every encounter with any one of those bears is very different when you're thinking about your safety out in bear country, and so you might encounter a normally playful bear that is particularly aggressive that day because it's protecting a food carcass, that it's an animal carcass, that it's killed there's essential food for it or its cubs, or
it might be a mother protecting its cubs. Or we might have surprised that bear and they don't like surprises. So you know, there's lots of factors stacked on each other about how dangerous the situation can be with a bear. But for the most part, you want to make lots of noise to avoid them, let them know that you come in to avoid the surprises. Don't go in anywhere near bears where they're sitting on carcasses. So if you smell stinky, stinky, nasty, rotten meat when you're out in
the forest, don't head that direction. If you find yourself in the middle of berry patches in the mountains in the fam blueberries and huckleberries. Know that a bear might be there just feet away from you, doing exactly the same thing. You know, So just being aware of your surroundings and circumstances. Know what bear scat looks like.
Right picture if you will, an upturned tin of brownies studded with pomegranate seeds, but a pile bigger than both of your hands. Just gaze into it, asking it questions of the forest.
One of my deep fascinations is everything you can learn from bear scat. And look for claw marks on trees, look for fur on trees where a bear will stand up against the trunk of a tree in rub it's back and leave hair behind. So all these indicators, and then if the worst comes to the worst, the question about a rhyme or how do you remember you know? There's really two categories of bears attacking humans. One is
generally a category of like self defense, being defensive. You're in my space, I want you out of my space. That's when you'll get a bluff charge like the bear that charged at me. Then you'll also have bears that could be predatory, and they're very different. That is a bear that is looking at you as a meal as a source of food, or a meal yourself. So you
can see immediately those two categories need two different responses. Right, the bear that you've surprised wants you out of its space, Do not surprise it, and get the hell out of its space right quietly, calmly, don't look at the bear in the face, back away, be incredibly humble and respectful, and just make sure that that bear knows it's allowed
to come by. And I've been in the countless situations and you just come off a trail and the bear will either walk by you or it'll disappear at a high speed in the other direction once it knows it's kind of got a handle on the situation. So in that situation, back in a way, okay.
Somber may run at you to scare your way or the.
Predatory situation is different. And strangely, this is statistically more common with big, wild, dominant black bears in the back country that don't encounter humans much. Those attacks can be incredibly scary, and so in that sort of case, you need to be more dominant, and you need to make sure that the bear knows you're not going to make an easy meal, you're not surprised it, you're not in its personal space. It's following you, it's expressing interest. So
it used to be that people would separate them. Well, if it's a gristy bear or a brown bear, you do this, and if it's a black bear, you do this. The rhyme that she might be thinking about, and it's not really correct, is if it's brown, fall down, if it's black, fight back, because a black beard fights in a predacious way more common than a grizzly, and a grizzly is going to potentially attack you to defend its space,
in which case should fall down and play dead. But the rhyme with brown fall down with black fight back, there's overlap. So we don't use that rhyme anymore. And I'll get into trouble for actually saying it. So I get that's a really long answer. The short answer is there isn't a great rhyme. But it used to be used to be that one brown fall down, back fight back,
But really you're better off looking. Is this aggressive a sudden defensive encounter or is this a predacious encounter or something in between, and just you know, knowing where the bears are knowing their behavior, knowing what they're inclined to do. Man, it's really easy to it's really easy to work around their world. Touch would and give them the benefit of the doubt, and let them give you the benefit of the doubt.
You know. Also I read that if you're buying bear pepper spray, always bring for the larger can and don't wait until a bear is directly in front of you. Bears can cover eight to ten feet in one stride, so if you spray it while the bear is thirty to sixty feet away, the cloud has time to take effect and disrupt the charge at you. So how you use it is important. Now for a few more bear tips.
Keep your ears open for that very special Bodus episode this week, because when I get four hundred and seventy a bear questions, sometimes you got to call for backup. Okay, two quick lightning round. How many bear tattoos do you have?
Oh? I don't have any tattoos?
Really? Okay, it was either going to be zero or one thousand? Okay. And how often do people just refer to you not with a name, but just as the bear guy.
All the time, all the time. Yeah, yeah, even my children some of my friend's kids actually call me not just the bear guy, but my full name, and then it says like, where's Chris Morgan the bear guy? Like a full title? You know, it's bizarre, it's hilarious. You a little kids.
On your business card? What about movies or cartoons that really do not get bears? Right? A lot of people want to know what kind of bear Winnie the Pooh is looking at y'all, Anne, Marie Daniels, Kevin Riggy, Lisa Burnell, Nicole Kleinman. First time question asker Hey Artemis and Zachary Peterson If Winnie the Pooh is actually a girl bear?
Well, good question. I don't know, but I would imagine Winnie the Pooh's a brown bear. What's the marmalade all about?
Though?
I can't even remember?
Ye the honey? They eat honey in real life? Right, yeah, honey, I can't get enough.
Stuff. Was Winnie the Pooh marmalade? Or was that Haddington Mom?
I think marmalade? Can I think?
What's cooking marmalade? Mister brown go on? Have a taste? That's right?
Yeah? But do they dig? Do they dig honey that much?
They do? Love honey absolutely. They would love marmalade if they could get their pools on it, but honey is cerently high on their list. I've seen yeah, and sun bears in the tropics. He eat lots of honey, and I've seen black bears climbing tree for honey. Groslies love it as well. Yes, absolutely packed full of calories for them.
I imagine the beastings don't get to them that much.
No, they're pretty well equipped with that fur, and they're just hardcore. I have a bear in my local forest here that I track, and I have one remote camera out there. I just have this one camera experiment and the woods are just out the back door here and so I can check my camera and see what's on it. And one day there was a bear on it. Last year. It's just before hibernation, before fall, and I thought I'd go out and see if I could find this one bear.
I was excited because there aren't many right here, And sure enough I found him right in the forest just a couple of days after finding him on this hidden remote wildlife camera and tracked him. He was a young black bear and eating hornets from a hornet's nest.
Hornets don't make honey. He was eating the hornets, fistfuls of hornets for breakfast. I mean the bragging rights.
So they'll dig into the roots of old rotten trees and pull out hornet nests and larvae and grubs, and you can see them swatting them away from their nose. But it's just like be a mosquito bite to us kind of thing, and it's definitely worth their while. They eat a lot of insects.
Oh and was it one of those famed overblown murder hornets in Washington?
Talking about what would they make of those? I know, yeah, that's true.
A stiff price for a meal. And the last questions I always ask this one was I usually ask it, but it was phrased so well by Sarah Bowen. Not a question, but I do hope you ask him what is the most unbearable part of their job? Because of the pun But usually I always ask what sucks the most about being an ersenologist? What's either something petty or something trivial or something huge. But what is the hardest part about what you do?
A paperwork? Probably it's you know, you don't get into it for that, I guess you could say weather, or insect bites or what. I love all that stuff. The worse it is out, the more pressure the nature puts on you and puts you through, the happier right. I love bushwacking. For example, bears do a lot of bushwacking. I love bushwacking. I like getting right off the trail through stick of bushes and just thick scrub and whatever it takes. I love that stuff. So none of that's
miserable to me. It's just the stuff back at home in front of a laptop.
If only there were worms and grubs under our laptop, we'd be more likely to pick them up. What about the best thing about bears? Just your favorite thing about them?
I think, I think is their intelligence. Actually, I mean they're strong, they're mighty, they're powerful, But I think they're intelligence. It's just it's off the charts, and it's surprising. The most people you know, you've got your primates, you've got your wells and dolphins certations. A lot of people put
bears next. Are very high up in terms of animal intelligence, and I think it makes them special spiritually and special as a species to learn about, because they're full of surprises, because they're smart.
You know, I didn't realize how intelligent they were and how social and able to read cues and really assess a situation almost emotionally.
Yes, definitely, and capable of memory and applying things that they've learned over space and time, so they can learn They can learn where a salmon run is in a particular run at what particular time of year, and they can traverse hundreds of miles between that time and the next year when they're going to be back, and they'll
know to be there in time. It's amazing. Same with the garbage can Unfortunately, so they get into trouble, you know, in places where there are humans on that human wildlife to mension, which is where a lot of my work is in trying to have people understand wildlife and especially bears, and in that human wildlife space, that gray area between where our world ends and their world begins, because I
think that's the front line of conservation. And so you know, bears learn very quickly to get benefits from that space, you know, whether it's whether it's getting into garbage or occasionally killing a young livestock or things like that. You know, so it's right on the edge of people's tolerance, and it's right on the edge of where the bears are able to be, and it's fertile ground there, and they're smart figuring it out all the time, which makes them they always seem like they're a step ahead.
You know. Well, I know people can learn more about you and other ersonologists and bears through your films and through your podcasts. Any particular film that you think people should go to first.
I would love people to go and watch Bear Trek. It's really interesting. It was a film that we did a few years ago. It came out in twenty eighteen,
and it was that journey. I took around to four different plays to meet three different bear biologists, each save in their species, from the most mind blowing rock climbing bears in Peru, spectacle bears that my friend Robin Appleton studies there, to these sun bears in tropical Borneo and my friends Sute Wang studies them to poll the bears in the Canadian Arctic with doctor Nick Lun And it's each of these bear species has a different story to talent.
The story starts with me and Alaska among the big bears that I've been that I've been talking about and then I sort of embark upon this journey to go and find others who are crazy about bears, other ersenologists like myself, you know, to try and understand what makes them tick and what their bears need.
So that's the movie Bear Track, and it's streaming on Amazon in case you want to see all kinds of bears with Chris. And also had a camp on a motorcycle. Okay it was.
It was really popular and it resulted in lots of good things for the biologists and people can can stream that on Amazon, so easy, easy to access and love it. If people would check out The Wild with Chris Morgan. That's a podcast that I do about wildlife and and lots of bear stories in there as well and from different parts of the world, but lots of other species as well. Just doing one on jaguars right now. I was in Belize recently doing some field stuff on jaguars
and Scarlet Macau's. I'm really attracted to these bright, interesting creatures that represent so much, so that's that's kind of what the podcast is about.
So ah amazing. I have a feeling there's gonna be a lot of people tagging along with whatever your next adventures are just consider ourselves plus ones too, like the front row seat to all those beautiful stuff. So this has been so so great. I'm so glad I got a chance to talk to you.
This has been fun. I've really enjoyed it. I hope I didn't talk a mile a minute too much. You know, don't ask me about bears whatever you do.
No, well, you're kidding. This is like my ears are open. Great, so ask intelligent organisms, doofy questions and then just sit back and bask in the bear bayolo. Now once again, that was Chris Morgan, who hosts the excellent podcast The Wild with Chris Morgan. New episodes this season are out literally today, so go find that. And the film he talked about is Bear Track available streaming. You can follow Chris Morgan on Instagram at Chris Morgan Wildlife and at
Morgan Wildlife on Twitter. They will be links to all that plus the charity in the show notes. And we are at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram, and I'm Ali Ward with one L on both and links are in the show notes to that. There's an Ologies podcast Facebook group moderated by my good friend Aaron Talbert. There's merch available at ologiesmerch dot com that is managed by Shannon
Feltis and Bonnie Dutch. And thank you Noel Dilworth for helping schedule all of the interviews and for leaving an easter basket on my doorstep and making me want to cry in a good way. Thank you Emily White for transcribing episodes. If you ever need something professionally transcribed, find Emily White. She has a new website called The word Ery. She is excellent. Transcripts and bleeped episodes are available at Alleyward dot com slash Ologies Extra for free to anyone
who needs them. Thank you Caleb Patten for bleeping the episodes. Thank you to full time hunk and editor Jared Jarebear Sleeper, as well as the Sunniest Sunbear Steven Ray Morris, who hosts the podcast see Jurassic Right in the podcast. They both edit the show. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme song. And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I divulge a secret nuggetive truth and I'll tell you this week number one, the plastic is still in the
neighbor's tree. It's so high. I don't know, I don't know what to do and number two. I was talking to my friend David about this and if anyone feels like they've hit a wall where they're just really tired and the world seems like maybe it's about to open up, but you're also like, I also kind of want to hibernate for a while, even though that's supposedly kind of what we've been doing for a year. Don't worry. I think that you're totally normal. I think we're all going
through that a little bit. So if you feel really tired and you're like, yeah, m hm, that's I think that's normal. Okay, that's not a very good secret, but it's earnest alright, alright. Pacodermatology, hobiology or do zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, old batology, nathology, zeriology, slidology, bears, beats, Battlestar Galactica,