As with many large predators, concerns are raised when bears approach human settlements.
Some studies suggest that some bears are likelier to exhibit such behaviour than others (e.g., Berezowska-Cnota, T. et al., 2023)
Meanwhile, it is not clear whether these patterns are driven by individual traits (intrinsic factors) or environmental conditions (external factors) (e.g., Bombieri, G. et al., 2023).
Some bears might be bolder than others but boldness can also be affected (increased or reduced) by environmental pressures (food abundance, habitat connectivity) or biological pressures (avoidance of males by females with cubs).
I have been considering another possible reason why some bears (in some places) might be more prone to visit settled areas.
What if another reason why bears approached human settlements was the need to satisfy curiosity on some physical level and to entertain important physical and mental skills that cannot be practised (and, thus, maintained) in the natural habitats due to modifications of the aforementioned habitats that result in greater homogeneity?
We tend to regard curiosity as something that relates to intellect and playfulness as something that arises out of emotional states or physical need during early life stages.
But what if curiosity and playfulness were actually a physical necessity and a physical drive that allowed us to maintain our skill potential that we have inherited from our ancestors but that we are not necessarily able to apply in our immediate environment (due to lack of stimuli or appropriate objects to handle)?
In bears this might be of special importance because bears might have evolved their large brain and their superior problem solving skills (cognition) through complex foraging tactiques that involve tackling varied tasks and items.
Namely, bears gather berries, they scavenge, they kill prey, they dig up roots, they consume grasses and forbs, they eat different types of nuts that have to be shelled or obtained from cones, they catch fish etc.
While in many species (primates, canids etc.), cognition is supposed to have developed in relation with complex social systems, bears might be the species where cognition has been enhanced through mastery of diverse foraging strategies (the results of which can be observed both in task solving and play in, e.g., captive bears).
In many species it is the juveniles (but also seniors) who play more than others which is suggestive of play as a developmental/maintenance mechanism (unfortunately I have forgotten where and concerning which species I have read about seniors playing more often than adult individuals – if I recall it, I will add the reference here).
Perhaps if animals do not get to play or to explore or to apply (exercise) or to otherwise engage the faculties that they possess and that have been evolved through hundreds, thousands and even millions of years, they might experience a physical need to find ways to satisfy this drive – just like the need of food can cause animals make riskier decisions.
Bears have evolved such complex foraging methods and it might be a physical or psychological imperative for the species to maintain them (as a physical condition) and to teach them to their offspring.
If they are unable to do so in their habitats, they might feel pressure to search for other means to carry out these activities (or to simulate them in other types of activities that encourage the use of the same muscles, mental faculties etc.).
And what if the landscapes that we have modified so profoundly (making them far more homogeneous – with reduced diversity of resources available) have deprived some species and individuals from satisfying these needs of skill maintenance and development in the wilderness?
Our landscapes nowadays often consist of few species, deadwood has become removed, rivers have been straightened out, nor they are connected to their floodplains with the respective elements that result from such connection.
Forest understoreys have changed from species rich and structurally diverse to impoverished and simplistic beneath the commercial monospecies plantation canopies.
Wetlands with their types of berries have been drained and woody plants have encroached replacing the berries.
Often vast, homogeneous areas must be crossed to reach the more complex and variedly interactive habitat patches.
Such landscapes might have become ‘boring’ (but also deprivational) for wildlife individuals living there.
For example, bears can be rather solitary and probably do not engage in as much social play (although see, e.g., Clapham, M. & Kitchin, J., 2016) that could serve as alternative method of physical and mental exercising.
On the other hand, bears seem very intent on object play and object manipulation which might be caused by the high functionality of their forelimbs and paws and their ability to assume different body postures, including standing up or rolling etc.
Bears interact with the surrounding object-type environment (vegetation etc.) in many different ways some of which are not limited to foraging.
I have read about visual marking in bears where they manipulate tree bark with the purpose of leaving their ‘dating profiles’ in the form of uncovered sapwood patches that can indicate, for example, the body size of the mark-leaving male (e.g. Penteriani, V. et al., 2021).
The variety of strategies needed to acquire food in and to travel through and to communicate in habitats altered by humans in a manner that reduces their complexity might be insufficient for a species that has evolved to master and to apply a vast array of strategies and that has developed the neural/motoric pathways which might ‘request’ to be maintained properly.
For example, I have read that it is harder for bears to forage on bilberries (compared to types of ‘cluster berries’ like crowberries) (Stenset, N.E. et al., 2016).
Despite the greater effort, bears consume bilberries anyway because bilberries offer high nutritional value (higher carbohydrate content and higher mean fresh berry weight).
This suggests that even the ‘foraging on berries’ category is actually comprised on many types of strategies and that bears have evolved different/complementary mechanisms to be able to gather several types of berries.
However, in many regions the variety of berries accessible in an area has decreased because of reduced potential associations with the introduced or modified plant communities (mostly, conifer plantations).
If foraging on different types of berries involves berry species-specific physical and cognitive faculties, depletion of species richness in berries might deprive the bear from applying these faculties while experiencing a need to keep engaging them in order not to lose them from their evolved repertoire.
Perhaps if only one or two foraging strategies have been denied, the bear does not experience discomfort because wild habitats, as well, are varied and not all bear ranges even in pristine ecosystems offer all types of foraging opportunities (e.g., no salmon runs or no need to kill large ungulates).
However, if the limitation exceeds a certain threshold, the bear may become driven to find alternative ways to invest its capacities and the human-built areas might offer the respective challenges (overcoming fences, undoing simple locks, opening containers etc.).
Additionally, I have seen so many videos where bears manipulate (well, destroy) cameras which seems to be an inclination specifically pronounced in bears (although this could be explained with the bear’s mere physiological capacity to manipulate the camera which is not as possible for other species that, for example, have lost supinatory ability).
(I have also argued that bear’s ‘trail camera interest’ might be related to their visual and scent-marking of the trees – bears might perceive trees as their communication stations and regard new objects (marks) as more pertinent to their interest than exhibited by other species that do not use trees for communication).
Also, I follow ‘Animals Asia’ bear sanctuary video posts where it is obvious that bears can spend enormous amounts of time exploring objects (like hessian sacks, movable wood parts) with great curiosty and apparent satisfaction.
They also seem to be able and very willing to apply many types of motion (motor play) where they roll and wriggle and rise on their hind-feet and climb and try to dislocate objects with their paws etc.
Besides this ‘legal play’, I have watched videos where bears sneak into human fenced-off areas.
While most wildlife (e.g. foxes, coyotes) seem to apply ‘sneaking’ technique, namely, if someone leaves a door or a gate open, they use the opportunity to sneak in, bears appear to be quite eager to invest time and to apply effort to actually ‘solve the puzzle’ of gaining entrance which is enabled by their ability to stand up and use paws.
I have seen a bear (on video footage) which found a way to open a trapdoor (which was tricky) and then used the fencing below to get a foothold to climb through that trapdoor.
That is no longer opportunistic sneaking in – it involves problem solving and, subjectively, it seemed to me that the bear was having fun, too 🙂
Bears have been filmed to open drawers, cupboards, garage doors, waste bins and even striking at the keys of a piano (which, for example, is an activity that could hardly benefit the bear energetically – leading to some food resource and it is doubtful the bear envisions finding food by placing its paws on the piano keys).
***
Perhaps the lack of stimuli which bears might suffer in certain, depleted, degraded types of environment has been augmented by their often solitary lifestyle (lacking social play and social interactions) and has resulted in the bear’s ‘bold behaviour’ which is driven also by the bear’s need to interactively employ its full physical and cognitive faculties.
If bears cannot satisfy their physical need to keep their neural pathways, motor skills and innovative (novel problem solving) cognitive functions maintained properly in habitats and landscapes where there is a lack of object/motion diversity (structural complexity, resource variety), the bears may be driven to human settlements not merely due to the physical need to satisfy hunger (or to ensure other food or safety, or migration related issues) but also to satisfy the physical need to maintain their ‘physical and cognitive heritage’, namely, the strategies and skills, and capabilities that their ancestors have developed through millennia but that modern bears frequently cannot apply in their daily routines in the impoverished wilderness of our times.
Our environmental impact may be detrimental to the species’ evolution itself (inability to practise skills and functions that have been genetically inherited and to pass on or even create new skills and functions that might be beneficial for future bears) as well as their normal physical and cognitive development.
And when this cannot be done in everyday manner (overcoming natural obstacles, moving through complex, heterogeneous environment, foraging on a variety of food items etc.), the animals must seek other ways to maintain their evolutionary heritage which they can later pass on to their offspring (in form of teaching and as genetically, instinctually inherent functions).
References
Berezowska-Cnota, T. et al. (2023). Individuality matters in human-wildlife conflicts: Patterns and fraction of damage-making brown bears in the north-eastern Carpathians. Journal of Applied Ecology. 60. 1-12. 10.1111/1365-2664.14388.
Bombieri, Giulia & Penteriani, Vincenzo & Delgado, M. & Groff, C. & Pedrotti, Luca & Jerina, Klemen. (2021). Towards understanding bold behaviour of large carnivores: the case of brown bears in human‐modified landscapes. Animal Conservation. 24. 10.1111/acv.12680.
Clapham, Melanie and Kitchin, John (2016) Social play in wild brown bears of
varying age-sex class. Acta Ethologica, 19 (3). pp. 181-188.
Penteriani, Vincenzo & González-Bernardo, Enrique & Hartasánchez, Alfonso & Ruiz Villar, Hector & Morales-González, Ana & Ordiz, Andres & Bombieri, Giulia & Díaz García, Juan & Cañedo, David & Bettega, Chiara & Delgado, María. (2021). Visual marking in mammals first proved by manipulations of brown bear tree debarking. Scientific Reports. 11. 10.1038/s41598-021-88472-5.
Stenset, N.E., Lutnæs, P.N., Bjarnadóttir, V., Dahle, B., Fossum, K.H., Jigsved, P., Johansen, T., Neumann, W., Opseth, O., R⊘nning, O., Steyaert, S.M.J.G., Zedrosser, A., Brunberg, S. and Swenson, J.E. (2016), Seasonal and annual variation in the diet of brown bears Ursus arctos in the boreal forest of southcentral Sweden. Wildlife Biology, 22: 107-116 wlb.00855. https://doi.org/10.2981/wlb.00194
Notes by Ieva 