BEAR BEHAVIOR & ECOLOGY
Potential Contributions by Captive Research
to Testing Hypotheses & Answering Questions
Generated by Field Research
 
Stephen F. Stringham, Bear Viewing Association, 39200 Alma Ave., Soldotna, AK 99669 Ph. 907/260-9059 Cell 907/394-6125 gobearviewing@hotmail.com Abstract: Research on wild bears has revealed numerous insights that facilitate rearing bears in captivity. Reciprocally, research on captives can contribute to study of wild bears, for instance by answering questions or testing hypotheses that field research cannot. This is the first in a series of papers identifying specific ways that captive studies might help. Figure 1. In field studies, mutual trust and respect are essential. Here, the author appeases a nervous grizzly/brown bear (Ursus arctos) female by kneeling and speaking gently. FIELD RESEARCH Advantages Behavioral research on bears in natural environments can be grand adventure, when foul weather, rough terrain, biting insects, and the risk of being mauled, aren’t making you question your sanity for ever undertaking the challenge. Yet, such research provides unparalleled insights into ursine activities such as foraging, hunting, anti-predator tactics, rivalry with peers, courtship, mating, maternal care, ontogeny, social organization, communication and ecology. Not only are we observing these animals in natural social systems within environments to which they have been adapting for millennia, but we often have relatively large numbers of individuals to observe and thus correspondingly large sample sizes for assessing individual variation in some traits. Over the past four decades, for example, I have observed hundreds of grizzly/brown bears (Ursus arctos) and black bears (U. americanus), mainly in Alaska. Limitations Yet, for all its advantages, behavioral research in the wild suffers several well-known limitations. Among the worst is limited continuity with the same individuals, which may be encountered only hit-and-miss, at unpredictable intervals, under such widely varied circumstances that some of the potentially most heuristic events are rarely if ever replicated. Second, animals often have to be observed from so far away that subtle behaviors cannot be perceived, much less recorded. Third, wild studies offer very limited opportunity for most kinds of experimentation. RESEARCH ON CAPTIVES Limitations Classical captive studies suffer from a whole host of other problems, including lack of environmental and social context. The functions of some behaviors are revealed only in the wild. Captive animals may have no opportunity to learn many natural behaviors including some facets of species-typical communication, anti-predator techniques or hunting skills. Worse, captivity can generate behavioral artifacts that would never occur in the wild, where they might be maladaptive. Furthermore, any single zoo or other holding facility may have only a few bears at a time, and sometimes the same bears for one or more decades. Assessing physical or behavioral variation among captive individuals may require collecting standard kinds of data at numerous facilities, then combining results – a level of cooperation still in its infancy. Impacts by deficits of specific kinds of experience are particularly obvious with captives. They may have no opportunity to learn some natural behaviors, perhaps including species-typical communication, anti-predator techniques or hunting skills. Worse, captivity generates behavioral artifacts. Most observers of bears in the wild dismiss captivity-artifacts offhand, without looking more closely – an attitude that might be justified if one’s only concern is dynamics of whole populations. Advantages Nevertheless, those of us who focus on individual animals and social dynamics should question whether artifacts of captivity might provide valuable insights into how ontogeny normally occurs in the wild, and into how vulnerable ontogeny is to modification, whether pathological or adaptive modification. Indeed, experimental research on the behavior of animals and humans has historically depended heavily on purposeful creation of abnormalities, whether through experiential deprivation, sensory or neural lesions, or countless other techniques. Serendipitous human neuroses, psychoses and lesions also provide deeper insight into the psychology of healthy people. Perhaps serendipitous abnormalities arising in zoos and circuses might likewise be exploited to yield critical insights. Study of physiological and anatomical abnormalities, due for instance to nutritional deficits, parasites, disease, and genetic pathologies of captive bears, might also be important for understanding bears in the wild. With regard to potentially adaptive captivity-artifacts, I have been amazed to learn that some adult male bears (e.g., Donna Andrews, viva voca) and felids which exhibit no known paternal behavior in the wild, nevertheless sometimes do so in captivity. Have we simply overlooked it in the wild? If paternalism is actually rare or non-existent in the wild, what developmental events preclude it in the wild, but sometimes allow it in captivity; could it, like bonds with handlers, be a product of abnormally close association? Alternately, might paternal behavior in captivity be a remnant from some past eon when such behavior was adaptive in the wild? If paternal behavior, social bonding or any other potentially adaptive artifact could now be triggered in wild individuals, how might this affect the ability of the species to adapt to modern environmental conditions? Is a cub’s social maturation retarded if it remains with its mother or an auntie past the age at which cubs normally dissociate from their mother in the wild? INTEGRATING WILD AND CAPTIVE STUDIES If one is to judge from experience with primates and other taxa, the limitations of both wild and captive studies are best overcome by integrating these methods, so that each can provide what the other lacks. Subsequent papers in this series identify numerous questions and hypotheses (e.g., apparent patterns, trends, and causal explanations) generated by research on wild bears (e.g., Stringham 2009a,b) which may not be resolvable without allied research on captive or hand-reared bruins, some of whom may be reared in semi-natural environments as they are prepared for self-sufficiency in the wild, others of whom may spend their entire lives in captivity. In particular, research on captives could advance understanding of differential survivorship among birth cohorts, diversity of skull and skeletal morphology, hibernation, physical and behavioral ontogeny, ontogenetic-maturation rate relative to age and nutritional status, sensory acuity, body language and symbolic communication, cognition, habituation and bonding. Bears offer a rich and in some ways unique basis for extending cognitive studies classically done on primates, as has long been advocated by pioneering Ethologist Gordon Burghardt. These papers also address studies on captives that demand expansion of field studies. a. Ursid Ontogenetic Responses to Variations in Nutrition and in Adult Male Abundance. b. Distinguishing Among North American Bear Species by Hand- And Foot-Prints. c. Ursid Pelage Coloration: Ontogenetic, Regional and Seasonal Variations. d. Does a Bear’s Behavioral Maturation Continue During Hibernation? e. Cognitive Ethology of Ursidae f. Ursid Ethogram Project g. Does Habituation to Humans Really Render Captive Bears Unfit for Release into the Wilds? Although these papers cite a sampling of captive and wild studies already conducted, a comprehensive review of that literature is beyond the current scope. REFERENCES CITED Stringham, S. F. 2009a. When Bears Whisper, Do You Listen? Negotiating Close Encounters With Wild Bruins. Wildwatch LLC, Soldotna, AK ______. 2009b. Ghost Grizzlies and Other Rare Bruins: The Art and Adventure of Knowing Wild Bears. Wildwatch LLC., Soldotna, AK. mailto:gobearviewing@hotmail.comshapeimage_2_link_0
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