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The Bear Facts - General bear information
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Bears and People - in the Plus Column

A variety of interactions, good and bad, has been taking place between bears and humans for thousands of years. Here is a sample.


Being on Your Best Bear Behavior
Being able to view bears in the wild is an awesome experience but it can also be a dangerous one. It is difficult to predict exactly how a bear will react to you in an encounter but the most important thing is to stay calm and don't run away. Running only seems to incite a bear and bears can run much faster than you can. When in bear country, always travel in a group. There is safety in numbers and more noise too, thereby alerting bears to your presence.
Bears are naturally shy of people so they will usually leave if given the opportunity. Always choose open trails during the day so the bear sees you first and avoids the encounter. If you see a bear in the distance, turn back, make a wide detour around it or wait until the bear moves away.
Face to face confrontations may be impossible to avoid if the bear is attracted by human food or garbage or it is a surprise encounter. Remember that black bears tend to be bluffers, snorting, swatting the ground and acting aggressive but rarely charging. Stand your ground but try to avoid direct eye contact as a bear may interpret this as an aggressive signal.
If you come upon a bear in a very close encounter, back away slowly, talking calmly. Move toward safety (a car, a building, etc.) If the bear is still interested in you, drop some item (but not food) to distract its attention.
Beware of a bear growling or roaring with its ears laid back. This means that the bear is agitated and may be about to charge. When this happens your best hope it to drop to the ground on your stomach, cover your neck and head with your arms and lie as still as possible. If you are wearing a backpack, leave it on as it may afford you some protection. Remain as quiet as possible. The bear views you as a threat and "playing dead" can work. When the bear moves away, remain on the ground for an extended period of time, the bear may have just moved off to watch. Wait until you are sure the bear has moved on before getting up.
Be calm, be alert and enjoy the fact that we still do share many wild spaces with bears.

                                                  Brown bear (Ursus arctos)
A View to a Bear
One of the best places to see bears and learn more about them is at your local zoo. Modern zoos are working very hard to help save endangered bear species, both with captive breeding programs and in habitat preservation projects around the world. Over the past decade zoos have been and are continuing to work very hard on creating naturalistic exhibits for their bears, exhibits that not only teach people on how bears fit in their environment but also to provide natural and stimulating enrichment for bears that live there.
For the adventurer, many opportunities exist in the United States to see bears in the wild, both as independent hikers and as part of naturalist tourist groups. Check with your state and national park authorities for areas known for bear sightings, check with your local zoo for organized trips or call a travel agent specializing in nature tours.
Some sites for brown bear watching include:

Several U.S national parks including: Glacier in Montana, Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and Yellowstone in Wyoming, and Katmai National Park in Alaska

Mc Neil River Sanctuary, Alaska (many naturalists and photographers rank this as one of the world's best wildlife viewing areas).

For polar bear watching visit join an organized tour to:
Denali National Park in Alaska or Churchill, Canada.

The Man Eaters
Bears have provoked many emotions in man throughout history, fear being the strongest. And as is usually the case, it is a fear based on misconceptions. Bears are not vicious man eaters; in fact, most bears eat little meat in their diet at any time so stalking and consuming humans makes little sense. And although most bears are strong enough to injure or even kill humans, they are usually timid and retreat at the first sound of human activity. They only attack if they feel threatened or are protecting cubs. Most bears will go out of their way to avoid human contact.
The noted exception to this would be a hungry polar bear, the most carnivorous of all bears has been known to hunt humans when no other food source is available.
In contemporary news stories, reports of bear attacks almost always involve campers who have left food in or near their tent or back pack. One particular incident saw a man lose two fingers to a bear he was actually feeding out of his hand. The bear simply couldn't differentiate where the food item ended and the hand began. Other attacks have been precipitated by campers hand-feeding bears and then running out of food. When the tidbits stopped, the angry bear demanded more in the only way it knew how. The myth of the sly, ravenous bear stalking the unwitting human is precisely that, a myth.

Bears: The Sacred Symbol
To the Greeks and Romans the bear was the figure of motherly compassion, a belief they derived from observing the female bear's unique care given to her tiny cubs. Ancient writers believed that the mother bear continually licked her little cub until it took shape. This was considered to be the very essence of creation, and as a result the Greeks and Romans referred to the bear only in the feminine gender. In the classical world of 40,000 years ago, the bear appeared as a goddess wearing a bear mask, the very symbol of the great mother of all creation.
Throughout history and around the world bears have figured in man's mythology. Their strength, their maternal care, their ability to stand human-like on two feet, their understanding of the passing seasons in their natural world, their amazing ability to hibernate, have all contributed to the bear mythos in cults and religions throughout human culture.
Native Americans have long respected the bear, considering it magically powerful spirit. The medicine man or shaman often impersonated the bear, wearing necklaces of teeth and claws, donning a cloak of bear skin and invoking the bear spirit for success in many of the tribe's endeavors.
One only has to look at today's sport section in the local newspaper to see that modern man still considers the bear a powerful spirit, worthy of invoking its magical characteristics for one's favorite team.

About Paddington, Pooh, Teddy and Friends
The nurturing side of bears, combined with their soft, furry appearance, their inquisitive, playful nature and their ability to stand on two legs have long made bears a favorite in children's literature. A brief list of personable bears known to children would certainly include
Winnie The Pooh, created by A.A. Milne
Paddington Bear, by Michael Bond
The Jungle Book's Baloo the Bear, written by Rudyard Kipling
Goldilocks and The Three Bears, by Robert Southey
The Berenstein Bears, by Jan and Stan Berenstain
Little Bear, created by Else Holmelund Minarik
Smokey Bear, a real black bear cub rescued from a forest fire and nursed back to health became an important "spokesperson" for the United States Forest Service.
One of the staples of every nursery is a teddy bear. This beloved symbol of childhood and innocence actually came to us in the early 1900's, when President Teddy Roosevelt, an ardent hunter and conservationist, refused to shoot and kill a black bear that was tied to a tree. The press loved this example of the President's compassion for nature, playing up the story and soon a New York toy manufacturer created a stuffed bear named Teddy with the President's permission. The teddy bear was sold as a Christmas novelty more than 90 years ago and today is probably the most popular stuffed animal in the world.

Of Bears and Beakers
Researchers studying hibernating bears have found that instead of disposing of their metabolic waste, bears recycle it. For example, denning bears normally turn potentially toxic nitrogen compounds into protein. Bears that cannot do this die from uremia, a condition in which nitrogenous wastes normally excreted by the kidneys remain in the blood. Once the mechanism by which bears are able to do this can be isolated it may have some very significant implications with regards to treatment of kidney failure in humans.
Data from studies on bears has already been instrumental in defining a diet program to reduce the frequency of dialysis for anephric humans awaiting kidney transplantation. This program has also been successful for people on hemodialysis who wish to dialyze less often.
Another human illness where bears may provide an answer is osteoporosis. Sufferers of osteoporosis slough off tissue faster than its made resulting in a build up of calcium in the bloodstream. If excess calcium in the bloodstream is not excreted it could be lethal. Mammals, including humans, which maintain non-weight bearing positions for a long time suffer from osteoporosis (a thinning and weakening of bone) except for bears! Black Bears which lie in dens too small for weight-bearing positions should suffer from osteoporosis just like human astronauts and the elderly or bedridden because bones support almost no weight. If hibernating bears do lose bone, they would have to prevent the calcium in their blood rising too high. Researchers have found that the Black Bear's blood levels of calcium and phosphorous (both used to make bone) remain constant throughout summer and winter because the bear's bone metabolism operates like that of an active animal. Researchers are now trying to isolate a regulatory substance circulating in the blood which is responsible for maintaining bone mass. This may eventually enable physicians to prevent osteoporosis in humans.
Researchers believe that there is a hormone produced by part of a bear's brain which controls temperature as well as appetite. If this is true and the hormone can be isolated then potentially it could be administered to patients with kidney problems, obesity or anorexia nervosa.
If the bear's hibernation induction trigger can be isolated, it could be used to slow metabolism and reduce head swelling in severe trauma cases, slow and cool the body during surgery, extend the viability of organs waiting to be transplanted and prevent fibrillation (wild, uncontrolled contractions of the heart) in heart surgery as it appears to in hibernating bears.