Bear behavior explained
Danielle Rivet, a PhD candidate at the University of Saskatchewan, has been working with bears for almost a decade, and has studied black and brown bears behaviors extensively. She spoke with the Nome Nugget about grizzly bear behavior following an alleged grizzly bear attack against a gold miner. Rivet has read several articles detailing the alleged incident, including the article that ran in last week’s edition of The Nome Nugget. We spoke with her on Monday about typical brown bear behaviors, and what to look for during an attack.
Nome Nugget: What do you make of what happened?
Danielle Rivet: It’s really hard to tell what happened, because there’s not a whole lot of information about there about exactly what the bear was doing. You can’t really make a definitive case one way or the other whether that’s typical bear behavior or whether it was a defensive or predatory situation, because we don’t really have enough of that kind of information. I think the main thing is that most bear encounters are defensive. They’re not predatory. Predatory bear attacks are pretty rare, and they’re mostly focused within black bears rather than brown bears, and they usually occur at night. So even within those particular circumstances, a predatory bear attack is incredibly rare. That’s not to say that circumstances can’t change. I don’t have all the information about what the bear was doing in particular so I can’t be 100 percent sure exactly what happened.
NN: Are there instances of bears returning and kind of stalking a victim, sort of like what was described in our story?
Danielle Rivet: Yeah, absolutely. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it was a predatory situation either. A defensive attack or encounter with a bear, especially with brown bears, it could be anything ranging from defense of cubs to defense of territory. Perhaps there was a carcass nearby or a food source that was important to that particular bear. It could have been a young bear that has never really encountered people before and was just kind of trying to feel its way in the process and figure out who was dominant, or an old or rooted bear that was hungry or particularly defensive of their area or their food source. I’m not 100 percent sure, but I know it’s not uncommon for bears to return to an area where they have encountered a threat previously, and if they feel that the threat is still there, they’ll keep coming back until they feel that that particular threat has been neutralized or gotten rid of. That’s not super uncommon. That’s definitely something that happens.
NN: The man involved had no lacerations, no bleeding, is that typical for a bear attack?
Danielle Rivet: That would depend on the type of bear attack and how it was handled when it occurred. If it’s a predatory attack, the bear’s goal is to kill and eat whatever it’s attacking. In a defensive attack, the goal is just to neutralize whatever the threat is. I think that’s where the general idea is where, if a brown bear is attacking you, you can play dead and it will go away. If they assume the threat has been neutralized, then they don’t necessarily have to do anything, because a defensive attack for a brown bear commonly will involve charges or stressed behavior. They don’t necessarily have to make physical contact. They might make a lot of sounds at you or run at you, but they don’t have to necessarily have to come into contact with you. It’s possible, but most encounters with brown bears are defensive and people do occasionally come out with lacerations on their face or on their body. If the bear actually got their mouth or their claws onto the person, that’s something that’s going to happen, but they don’t always come into contact with you in a defensive attack.
NN: Is that typical behavior for a bear not to try get into a cooler filled with meat?
Danielle Rivet: It just totally depends on what the bear is focused on and on what it’s able to smell. I’ve worked with captive grizzly bears in the past, and once they know that they can’t get into something, they pretty much leave it alone, regardless of how good it smells. Once they know that they can’t get into it anymore, it’s no longer relevant to them. But I don’t know how familiar this bear would have been with whatever kind of cooler or what was being used to hold the meat. It is maybe a little odd, but I don’t know.
NN: What should we know about grizzly bear behavior, just to have a better understanding?
Danielle Rivet: I think it’s really hard for a lot of people to differentiate between predatory and defensive behaviors. I think a lot of people assume that bears in general are just very dangerous and very scary animals, and they’re all out to get you and they’re going to drag you out of your tent in the middle of the night and whatnot, but that’s generally not the case. A lot of them are just as afraid of us as we are of them. I think the important thing is being able to figure out what species you’re dealing with – you know black bear, brown bear – and what types of behaviors you need to be looking for in terms of differentiating between a predatory and a defensive attack, because they’re very different things.