Fearful bear

Ole-Gunnar Støen has met many bears. He has studied how bears live, what they eat, and how they react to encounters with human beings. He offers reassurance to anyone who is afraid of running into a bear when hiking in the forests or mountains.

"Bears are very afraid of us. We have conducted experiments with people who 'pretend' to be hiking close to a bear that is tagged with a GPS transmitter. The 'hikers' have passed by the bear nearly 100 times, but they have only got a glimpse of it on 10 occasions, even though they have been just 50 to 100 metres away from it. A bear will lie down and hide when it sees people, or it will sneak quietly away," Støen relates.

But why is the bear afraid of us? After all, we are smaller and weaker than it is.

Støen explains it this way: "Bear hunting was common in Norway in the early 1900s. There was actually a bounty on bears back then. Any bear that was not afraid of people ended up getting shot. The bears that managed to survive were the ones that were most elusive and afraid. The bears living in Norway today are descendants of those shy bears, and they have inherited that fear.

Foto: KJELL-ERIK MOSEID/ NN/ SAMFOTO"The brown bears that live in the vast wilderness areas of North America are not as afraid of humans", asserts Støen. "This is because they have not usually been in contact with people. They have not learned that we can be dangerous."

Can be dangerous

Although Norwegian and Swedish bears are almost as good-natured as described in children's songs, they can be aggressive. Last autumn, one hunter was killed by a bear in Sweden, and another was injured.

"It is extremely rare for anyone to be harmed by a bear, but if a person stumbles across a she-bear with cubs, or interrupts a bear that is eating something very good, the bear can get very irritated. Dogs can also bother them, and I suspect that is the reason why hunters are almost the only ones who have unpleasant encounters with bears. They are often accompanied by dogs that bark at the bear", he says.

"When a bear attacks, it is almost always just to scare off the other party", points out the bear researcher. "A bear will snort and run at you, but it will stop short about four or five metres away from you. The smartest thing to do if you run into a bear is to politely apologise for disturbing it, then back up slowly. If you run, the bear might see you as prey."

Family is important

Bears are generally loners who keep to themselves, but Støen has discovered that she-bears like to live in the same area as their relatives. Nuclear families consisting of mother, father and children do not exist in the bear world.

"Cubs are born in the winter lair and they spend their first summer with their mother. Then they hibernate together the following winter. Some cubs tag along with their mother the next summer too. When the cubs are about 18 months old, they go their separate ways for good. Then the cubs use their noses to figure out where their sisters, aunts and other family members are located. Female bears prefer to live in the same area. Male cubs leave the family for good and scatter in all directions", recounts the bear researcher.

Published in 'Nysgjerrigper' no. 4/08

Translated by Linda Sivesind

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