Following the theme of animals outwitting people (including the freedom-loving feral pig), I share another fun story in the news. In the Adirondacks of New York, one bear has mastered the art and science of cracking open “bear proof canisters.” Built of tough polycarbonate plastic and designed with a bear-proof tabbed lid, the BearVault has passed bear-testing at California's Folsom City Zoo and kept grizzly bears weighing up to 1,000 pounds from camper’s food for years in Yellowstone National Park and elsewhere. But the bear who could outwit the BearVault has become an almost mythic figure.
Reports first surfaced of campers' BearVaults getting broken into not long after New York started requiring campers to use bear proof canisters in the Adirondack's eastern High Peaks five years ago. Since then, negative bear-human interactions declined from 374 in 2004 to 61 in 2008. But something else happened: BearVaults started getting broken into. After this happened a few times in the same general region, biologists had pinpointed an ursine culprit: Yellow-Yellow, a 125-pound female black bear named after two yellow ear tags used to identify her. This bear always happened to be in the area of the break-in, which the biologists tracked from her radio collar. Before long, hikers actually spotted the bear with two yellow ear tags breaking into canisters.
Jamie Hogan, owner of the company that makes BearVault, then designed a two-tabbed canister model and field tested it this year... but Yellow-Yellow broke into those too! Scientists think the bear depresses the tab with her teeth, turns the lid, and uses her teeth on the second tab too. That’s one crafty bear! What's more, another bear, Blue-Green (also named after its ear tags) has recently learned to break into the canisters as well. Hogan is working on a new design... stay tuned.
New York's Department of Environmental Conservation wildlife technician Ben Tabor says Yellow-Yellow probably isn't truly "smarter than your average bear," like Yogi, but just had a new technique to master. In nature, bears have to use quick wit and skill to find food to survive. This was just yet another new food-finding venture ince campers no longer string their food in the treetops from a suspended rope.
"Bears do learn very well," Tabor explains how the bears can learn to accomplish complex tasks like break into canister. "For example, if you first leave food out near a campsite, the bear eats it and returns to find it in a bag. It opens the bag and eats the food. Then you hang it in a tree 5 feet up. Bear climbs tree, gets bag, eats food. Then you put food ten, then 20 feet up, but through trial and error bear pulls rope and gets food. learns to pull down rope and food, break cables, break trees... You start slowly using bear canisters, but the lids are hard to get off for users, so they leave it half on. Bears get the lid off by pulling on the edge. You make a thicker lid. People still use it wrongly. Bears still get food. You make thickest lid yet with more buttons but now the bear is really well learned and very determined that it can break and get into that color, size and shape canister..."
The most important lesson from all this, says Tabor, is that he hopes Yellow-Yellow's fame can help remind people to leave no trace and to not feed bears. Remember, he says, a fed bear is a dead bear.
On the other hand, here's an interesting story just out: Biologists in Florida use doughnuts to attract bears which they then radio-collar so they can find out what habitat they're using and help preserve it, and protect the bears - and people. Given that a fed bear is a dead bear, is this a good idea to give wild bears human food, even for the sake of research?
Do you have any stories of inventive, crafty wild animals? Or bear encounters?
great article and nice blog
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