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In the Company of Bears: What Black Bears Have Taught Me about Intelligence and Intuition
In In the Company of Bears, originally published in hardcover as Out on a Limb, Ben Kilham invites us into the world he has come to know best: the world of black bears.
For decades, Kilham has studied wild black bears in a vast tract of Northern New Hampshire woodlands. At times, he has also taken in orphaned infants feeding them, walking them through the forest for months to help them decipher their natural world, and eventually reintroducing them back into the wild. Once free, the orphaned bears still regard him as their mother. And one of these bears, now a 17-year-old female, has given him extraordinary access to her daily life, opening a rare window into how she and the wild bears she lives among carry out their daily lives, raise their young, and communicate.
Witnessing this world has led to some remarkable discoveries. For years, scientists have considered black bears to be mostly solitary. Kilham's observations, though, reveal the extraordinary interactions wild bears have with each other. They form friendships and alliances; abide by a code of conduct that keeps their world orderly; and when their own food supplies are ample, they even help out other bears in need. Could these cooperative behaviors, he asks, mimic behavior that existed in the animal that became human? In watching bears, do we see our earliest forms of communications unfold?
Kilham's dyslexia once barred him from getting an advanced academic degree, securing funding for his research, and publishing his observations in the scientific literature. After being shunned by the traditional scientific community, though, Kilham s unique findings now interest bear researchers worldwide. His techniques even aid scientists working with pandas in China and bears in Russia. Moreover, the observation skills that fueled Kilham s exceptional work turned out to be born of his dyslexia. His ability to think in pictures and decipher systems makes him a unique interpreter of the bear's world.
In the Company of Bears delivers Kilham s fascinating glimpse at the inner world of bears, and also makes a passionate case for science, and education in general, to open its doors to different ways of learning and researching doors that could lead to far broader realms of discovery."
For decades, Kilham has studied wild black bears in a vast tract of Northern New Hampshire woodlands. At times, he has also taken in orphaned infants feeding them, walking them through the forest for months to help them decipher their natural world, and eventually reintroducing them back into the wild. Once free, the orphaned bears still regard him as their mother. And one of these bears, now a 17-year-old female, has given him extraordinary access to her daily life, opening a rare window into how she and the wild bears she lives among carry out their daily lives, raise their young, and communicate.
Witnessing this world has led to some remarkable discoveries. For years, scientists have considered black bears to be mostly solitary. Kilham's observations, though, reveal the extraordinary interactions wild bears have with each other. They form friendships and alliances; abide by a code of conduct that keeps their world orderly; and when their own food supplies are ample, they even help out other bears in need. Could these cooperative behaviors, he asks, mimic behavior that existed in the animal that became human? In watching bears, do we see our earliest forms of communications unfold?
Kilham's dyslexia once barred him from getting an advanced academic degree, securing funding for his research, and publishing his observations in the scientific literature. After being shunned by the traditional scientific community, though, Kilham s unique findings now interest bear researchers worldwide. His techniques even aid scientists working with pandas in China and bears in Russia. Moreover, the observation skills that fueled Kilham s exceptional work turned out to be born of his dyslexia. His ability to think in pictures and decipher systems makes him a unique interpreter of the bear's world.
In the Company of Bears delivers Kilham s fascinating glimpse at the inner world of bears, and also makes a passionate case for science, and education in general, to open its doors to different ways of learning and researching doors that could lead to far broader realms of discovery."
296 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 31, 2015
There were parts of this book that were really interesting to me -- how Ben got to know "his" bears, how they reacted in certain situations, some of the small experiments he's done (the scents with the zoo bears was particularly interesting). However, I kept getting yanked out of the "flow" of the book due to a lot of wandering thoughts and ideas that didn't seem very well organized. I think a better round of editing/organization could've made it stronger.
The one part that was very consistent was a lot of grumbling about the scientific community, and how the author wasn't a part of it. Grumble, grumble scientists. Grumble grumble experiments. It all seemed rather pouty and significantly took away from the book as a whole.
I wish he would've spent more time talking about the difference in bear behavior with regard to him (the one who raised them) vs. strangers.
And I wish there was less talk of feeding Oreo cookies to bears.
The one part that was very consistent was a lot of grumbling about the scientific community, and how the author wasn't a part of it. Grumble, grumble scientists. Grumble grumble experiments. It all seemed rather pouty and significantly took away from the book as a whole.
I wish he would've spent more time talking about the difference in bear behavior with regard to him (the one who raised them) vs. strangers.
And I wish there was less talk of feeding Oreo cookies to bears.
December 3, 2019
"No bear is an island." --John Donne (probably, after reading this book)
I have mixed feelings. I almost gave this only four stars, due to my problem with one chapter, but ultimately decided the beginning was good enough to give five stars to the whole.
This book is basically two parts stitched together: an intimate look at the private lives of wild American Black Bears; and Benjamin Kilham's musings about how his neurodivergence both hampered his professional success and enabled him unique insight into these bears, and how his experiences made him come up with his pet theory about human social and linguistic evolution. Most of the book, the part that details bear behavior using real stories of real bears (whom you come to know and love well), is very valuable, entertaining, thought-provoking, and I would recommend it to anyone. The rest of it, Kilham's deepest digressions into his theories of non-bears, particularly the latter 3/4s of Chapter 7: What Bears Can Teach Us, is plagued with vagueness, slight factual inaccuracies, and repetition of his conclusions without supporting evidence. It was boring and annoying, and greatly diminished my enjoyment of the book as a whole--and that was with me actually agreeing with most of what Kilham had to say! The book would have been much stronger with more anecdotes about the bears instead.
That said, I was left thinking about so many things that I would love to explore more deeply. I'll just mention a few here (and perhaps a book in which one person jumps off onto theoretical tangents inspires another to review the book with theoretical tangents? *g*):
1. I was very upset by . Hunting is one thing, but the people who deliberately do what those men did, like the men who killed Romeo the wolf and Cecil the lion, are sociopaths, no different from the men in the Wild West who went out of their way to "duel" with famous gunslingers, or the abusers on social media whose sole ambition is to harm someone more famous than they are and so gain infamy. It bothers me that people are dismissive of how destructive and antisocial these men are, just because their victims happen to be animals they were according to the strict letter of the law allowed to kill. They are sick, and they hurt humans too.
2. It is (scientifically) well-known that one should avoid killing top predators ever to maintain healthy ecosystems, but this book outlines and confirms other research that it is especially destructive to kill mature, territorial adults. The resource sharing done by territorial adult solitary carnivores (more on that at 3.) greatly improves cub survivorship in the entire surrounding area. Adult survivorship of black bears, like most top predators, without human interference is close to 100% year-to-year. Given that black bears left to their own devices regularly live into their 20s or 30s, this means bear society is naturally incredibly stable, and they are able to develop and maintain close relationships with their neighbors that over time come to involve frequent resource-sharing. When a territorial adult dies, the power vacuum results in an exponential increase of time- and energy-wasting violent disputes, reduction of resource sharing, and ultimately lower reproductive success in every bear that had a peaceful relationship with the dead one.
In a stable system, this social upheaval occurs only once every 20-30 years. With indiscriminate human hunting, however, adult bear mortality skyrockets to 40-60%, and average lifespan is reduced by more than half, resulting in more frequent social upheaval. In addition, individual fitness is affected in two ways. One, since bears are social learners, without experienced older adults to lead (inadvertently) younger bears to food resources, survival is affected in unusual forage years, such as droughts, extreme weather, etc. Two, naturally, black bears are not able to breed successfully (females must increase their weight by at least 50% in the fall in order to successfully have her zygotes implant and/or nurse any cubs she successfully bears; this fat-building needs to be even higher for her to have 3 or 4 cubs in each litter, which is best for genetic health in the population) until age 6(female) to 8(male), meaning if they now live only to age 15, means lifetime offspring production of only 8-12, versus 16-20 or more. And the surviving bears are far more prone to have to cover far more territory to find food (not having experienced bears to teach them), resulting in many more bears being killed young by irresponsible people accidentally feeding them their garbage/pet food/livestock. If humans must hunt predators, targeting subadults would actually have far less impact on the population as a whole, and reduce human-animal conflict.
3. It is especially exciting to me to learn about the social life of bears, given recent data coming out of a study of pumas in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of how much territorial adults resource-share (and those are truly solitary carnivores! not sharing surplus acorns or other vegetable food like black bears), and I expect we will soon have data showing that this behavior is extremely common across most top mammalian carnivores. Remote cameras and open minds (more on that at 4.) are doing so much to help us understand the intimate lives of these keystone species. Funnily enough, GYE studies have also given us data on adoption, with a well-documented grandmother-granddaughter adoption in Brown Bears, under almost identical circumstances to Squirty's adoption of Josie, as well as kin adoption in pumas, although that case was the adult daughter adopting her half-siblings after their mother was killed by humans (in a legal hunt, although nursing females were not supposed to be killed). So much more research needs to be done!
4. Kilham includes a couple of great (infuriating) quotes--such as a couple of psychologists in a ludicrously self-contradictory statement saying, among other things, "The inability of most animals to recognize the mental states of others ["Theory of Mind"] distinguishes animal communication most clearly from human language"; and an offensively ignorant and unimaginative declaration from Steven Pinker* "Most mammals hug the ground sniffing[...] Rather than living in a three-dimensional coordinate space hung with movable objects, standard mammals live in a two-dimensional flatland which they explore througha zero-dimensional peephole" [like, what the h does that even mean?]; and this stinky gem from British zoologist Tim Clutton-Brock (who famously studies the highly intelligent and extremely social meerkat) that resource sharing between non-blood-kin "doesn't exist" in nonhumans because they lack "language"--all perfect examples of people not actually observing what they're talking about, deciding that what they haven't seen doesn't exist, and then sitting around inventing an elaborate explanation for why it doesn't exist... when all the time it actually does exist and they're just plain wrong (like how we now know about pumas sharing kills with unrelated neighbors, to the shock of everyone everywhere who bought into the myths of completely antisocial cats (minus mating) and The Selfish Gene**). Which is also why, after all Kilham's saying that his work is dismissed because it's observational, and that even biologists who should know better underestimate the social lives and intelligence of bears, it's annoying when he goes on to say some very silly things about dogs and cats. He should know better. ; )
5. Which, finally, brings me to Kilham's theories. I liked what he had to say about how advanced communication/language is more likely to need to develop to facilitate resource-sharing with strangers, rather than within a family group. And, related to this, of course, the in retrospect obvious, but which wowed me, observation that if early hominids had the same habitat and social structure as chimpanzees, we would all be chimpanzees, not humans. Obviously, like bipedalism, the development of language coincided with the ecological shift of our ancestral forests to savannahs, where (as the migrating wildebeest know), it is impossible to maintain a single territory large enough to provide enough resources for a year, much less in drought or other poor natural food production. Rather than the costly and pointless exercise of going to war (fighting with subadult bears), we built ways to establish trust and reciprocity through communication and sharing with our neighbors (other tribes for humans, other territorial adults for bears). Blessed are the peacemakers, indeed.***
That said, his argument suffers from a few flaws, which I'll just briefly mention: a) his acceptance of the idea of the Selfish Gene and the tendency to refer to evolution as reaching a desired form and then stopping (which even evolutionary biologists sometimes do without thinking, when they should DEFINITELY know better!), b) his fuzzy dates and vagueness (who has evolved for 500 million years? vertebrates? Eight million? bears? Five hundred thousand? Not Homo sapiens!), and c) his rushing to broad generalizations without considering alternatives. Prime example of the latter: Kilham says that resource-sharing is the root of altruism, when clearly the primary social unit of mammals is mother-child. Most biologists (due to unfortunate enculturation) tend to focus on male-female mating pair (often so they can leap to conclusions about the relationships between human men and women), but not everyone mates; everyone has a mother. Mother-child social units are obviously the root of altruism in mammals and undoubtedly parent-child units in birds. Likewise, he constantly states that bears are not solitary because they have social lives. But having social lives is not what determines the solitary/social carnivore designation (see pumas). Bears are absolutely Solitary Carnivores, even though they are omnivores with complex social lives. I think the determination lies in whether, when stressed/wounded/sick the animal goes to its kin group for comfort or hides alone by itself. Wolves/dogs are Social, cats/bears are Solitary, and frequently have a limited tolerance even for those they love. ; )
6. I am leery of the term "Theory of Mind" because my first exposure was to its use as a way to psychologically abuse Autists, but anyone with even the most basic level of empathy toward their pets knows a huge number of animals clearly have it. Squirty's management of Benjamin Kilham reminded me so powerfully of my relationship with my cat, I just constantly had to laugh. Just this week the little monster discovered (after four tries, so don't underestimate their patience and creativity either!) that I will play with her if she brings a toy to me and yowls incessantly; and this just shortly after she feigned indifference until my back was turned and then rushed for the forbidden fruit (in this case out an open door onto the roof; she is, of course, an indoor cat). But we humans have theory of mind too. When she tried it the second time (thankfully now the roof access is successfully closed off), I was ready and caught her. She was shocked and angry and attempted to punish me in a way Squirty would definitely understand and approve of!
7. I am fascinated to learn that all typical bears (pandas are different) have virtually the same "language" of visual, scent, and auditory cues, (even the surviving short-face bear that evolved in the Americas separately from all other living bear species that evolved into their current forms in Asia) meaning both the intelligence and the resource-sharing go way, way back in their evolutionary history. And given the clear Theory of Mind and linguistic skills in cephalopods, not to mention the communal protection and resource-sharing in plants, this sociability seems to be really fundamental to life on a very deep level, and/or is an evolutionary requirement of this beautiful planet and its dynamic interconnected webs of living things. We are so lucky to live here.
8. I refuse to see Grizzly Man for several reasons, but Kilham's observations shed a lot of light onto what happened to Treadwell. He and Huguenard were killed by a hungry male bear unfamiliar with Treadwell and his peculiar and provoking behavior. He was not communicating with the bears properly, which was not clear to him since all the other bears he was harassing had built a peaceful relationship with him over 13 years. The new bear, having not been inured to Treadwell's unusual behavior, reacted completely typically--and was killed for it. He was not "cruel, mindless nature" as Herzog would have it, but an intelligent animal whose communication was not understood. There are no problem bears, only problem humans. And yes, accepting the real nature of top predators (neither senseless and cruel, nor noble and romantic, but living, feeling, and as predictable as any person in a world with so many variables and motivations) is terrifying. But so is flying in an airplane or driving in a car. Bears will be bears, and that is the most wonderful thing about them. That our advanced language can produce guides to living peacefully with said bears, is the most wonderful thing about us.
*Whom Kilham mistakenly identifies as an evolutionary biologist by the way, rather than a linguist with a background in psychology, which he is, in yet another example of a man becoming the most prominent expert in his very narrow field and then deciding he actually knows everything about everything. Rising to the level of their incompetence?
**Of course it should be noted (and this is part of why I don't like the term "altruism"), that (as Kilham's bears show) this resource-sharing is in fact both beneficial to the individual and to the species--and of course it's the species that matters, evolutionarily speaking, not the "selfish genes" of the individual.
***So many people are so eager to separate humanity from other animals. Given that fire, cooking, clothing, advanced tool-making, and probably language dates back at least to Homo erectus, with its much smaller brain, I'm beginning to wonder if all our big brains evolved for is narcissism.
I have mixed feelings. I almost gave this only four stars, due to my problem with one chapter, but ultimately decided the beginning was good enough to give five stars to the whole.
This book is basically two parts stitched together: an intimate look at the private lives of wild American Black Bears; and Benjamin Kilham's musings about how his neurodivergence both hampered his professional success and enabled him unique insight into these bears, and how his experiences made him come up with his pet theory about human social and linguistic evolution. Most of the book, the part that details bear behavior using real stories of real bears (whom you come to know and love well), is very valuable, entertaining, thought-provoking, and I would recommend it to anyone. The rest of it, Kilham's deepest digressions into his theories of non-bears, particularly the latter 3/4s of Chapter 7: What Bears Can Teach Us, is plagued with vagueness, slight factual inaccuracies, and repetition of his conclusions without supporting evidence. It was boring and annoying, and greatly diminished my enjoyment of the book as a whole--and that was with me actually agreeing with most of what Kilham had to say! The book would have been much stronger with more anecdotes about the bears instead.
That said, I was left thinking about so many things that I would love to explore more deeply. I'll just mention a few here (and perhaps a book in which one person jumps off onto theoretical tangents inspires another to review the book with theoretical tangents? *g*):
1. I was very upset by . Hunting is one thing, but the people who deliberately do what those men did, like the men who killed Romeo the wolf and Cecil the lion, are sociopaths, no different from the men in the Wild West who went out of their way to "duel" with famous gunslingers, or the abusers on social media whose sole ambition is to harm someone more famous than they are and so gain infamy. It bothers me that people are dismissive of how destructive and antisocial these men are, just because their victims happen to be animals they were according to the strict letter of the law allowed to kill. They are sick, and they hurt humans too.
2. It is (scientifically) well-known that one should avoid killing top predators ever to maintain healthy ecosystems, but this book outlines and confirms other research that it is especially destructive to kill mature, territorial adults. The resource sharing done by territorial adult solitary carnivores (more on that at 3.) greatly improves cub survivorship in the entire surrounding area. Adult survivorship of black bears, like most top predators, without human interference is close to 100% year-to-year. Given that black bears left to their own devices regularly live into their 20s or 30s, this means bear society is naturally incredibly stable, and they are able to develop and maintain close relationships with their neighbors that over time come to involve frequent resource-sharing. When a territorial adult dies, the power vacuum results in an exponential increase of time- and energy-wasting violent disputes, reduction of resource sharing, and ultimately lower reproductive success in every bear that had a peaceful relationship with the dead one.
In a stable system, this social upheaval occurs only once every 20-30 years. With indiscriminate human hunting, however, adult bear mortality skyrockets to 40-60%, and average lifespan is reduced by more than half, resulting in more frequent social upheaval. In addition, individual fitness is affected in two ways. One, since bears are social learners, without experienced older adults to lead (inadvertently) younger bears to food resources, survival is affected in unusual forage years, such as droughts, extreme weather, etc. Two, naturally, black bears are not able to breed successfully (females must increase their weight by at least 50% in the fall in order to successfully have her zygotes implant and/or nurse any cubs she successfully bears; this fat-building needs to be even higher for her to have 3 or 4 cubs in each litter, which is best for genetic health in the population) until age 6(female) to 8(male), meaning if they now live only to age 15, means lifetime offspring production of only 8-12, versus 16-20 or more. And the surviving bears are far more prone to have to cover far more territory to find food (not having experienced bears to teach them), resulting in many more bears being killed young by irresponsible people accidentally feeding them their garbage/pet food/livestock. If humans must hunt predators, targeting subadults would actually have far less impact on the population as a whole, and reduce human-animal conflict.
3. It is especially exciting to me to learn about the social life of bears, given recent data coming out of a study of pumas in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of how much territorial adults resource-share (and those are truly solitary carnivores! not sharing surplus acorns or other vegetable food like black bears), and I expect we will soon have data showing that this behavior is extremely common across most top mammalian carnivores. Remote cameras and open minds (more on that at 4.) are doing so much to help us understand the intimate lives of these keystone species. Funnily enough, GYE studies have also given us data on adoption, with a well-documented grandmother-granddaughter adoption in Brown Bears, under almost identical circumstances to Squirty's adoption of Josie, as well as kin adoption in pumas, although that case was the adult daughter adopting her half-siblings after their mother was killed by humans (in a legal hunt, although nursing females were not supposed to be killed). So much more research needs to be done!
4. Kilham includes a couple of great (infuriating) quotes--such as a couple of psychologists in a ludicrously self-contradictory statement saying, among other things, "The inability of most animals to recognize the mental states of others ["Theory of Mind"] distinguishes animal communication most clearly from human language"; and an offensively ignorant and unimaginative declaration from Steven Pinker* "Most mammals hug the ground sniffing[...] Rather than living in a three-dimensional coordinate space hung with movable objects, standard mammals live in a two-dimensional flatland which they explore througha zero-dimensional peephole" [like, what the h does that even mean?]; and this stinky gem from British zoologist Tim Clutton-Brock (who famously studies the highly intelligent and extremely social meerkat) that resource sharing between non-blood-kin "doesn't exist" in nonhumans because they lack "language"--all perfect examples of people not actually observing what they're talking about, deciding that what they haven't seen doesn't exist, and then sitting around inventing an elaborate explanation for why it doesn't exist... when all the time it actually does exist and they're just plain wrong (like how we now know about pumas sharing kills with unrelated neighbors, to the shock of everyone everywhere who bought into the myths of completely antisocial cats (minus mating) and The Selfish Gene**). Which is also why, after all Kilham's saying that his work is dismissed because it's observational, and that even biologists who should know better underestimate the social lives and intelligence of bears, it's annoying when he goes on to say some very silly things about dogs and cats. He should know better. ; )
5. Which, finally, brings me to Kilham's theories. I liked what he had to say about how advanced communication/language is more likely to need to develop to facilitate resource-sharing with strangers, rather than within a family group. And, related to this, of course, the in retrospect obvious, but which wowed me, observation that if early hominids had the same habitat and social structure as chimpanzees, we would all be chimpanzees, not humans. Obviously, like bipedalism, the development of language coincided with the ecological shift of our ancestral forests to savannahs, where (as the migrating wildebeest know), it is impossible to maintain a single territory large enough to provide enough resources for a year, much less in drought or other poor natural food production. Rather than the costly and pointless exercise of going to war (fighting with subadult bears), we built ways to establish trust and reciprocity through communication and sharing with our neighbors (other tribes for humans, other territorial adults for bears). Blessed are the peacemakers, indeed.***
That said, his argument suffers from a few flaws, which I'll just briefly mention: a) his acceptance of the idea of the Selfish Gene and the tendency to refer to evolution as reaching a desired form and then stopping (which even evolutionary biologists sometimes do without thinking, when they should DEFINITELY know better!), b) his fuzzy dates and vagueness (who has evolved for 500 million years? vertebrates? Eight million? bears? Five hundred thousand? Not Homo sapiens!), and c) his rushing to broad generalizations without considering alternatives. Prime example of the latter: Kilham says that resource-sharing is the root of altruism, when clearly the primary social unit of mammals is mother-child. Most biologists (due to unfortunate enculturation) tend to focus on male-female mating pair (often so they can leap to conclusions about the relationships between human men and women), but not everyone mates; everyone has a mother. Mother-child social units are obviously the root of altruism in mammals and undoubtedly parent-child units in birds. Likewise, he constantly states that bears are not solitary because they have social lives. But having social lives is not what determines the solitary/social carnivore designation (see pumas). Bears are absolutely Solitary Carnivores, even though they are omnivores with complex social lives. I think the determination lies in whether, when stressed/wounded/sick the animal goes to its kin group for comfort or hides alone by itself. Wolves/dogs are Social, cats/bears are Solitary, and frequently have a limited tolerance even for those they love. ; )
6. I am leery of the term "Theory of Mind" because my first exposure was to its use as a way to psychologically abuse Autists, but anyone with even the most basic level of empathy toward their pets knows a huge number of animals clearly have it. Squirty's management of Benjamin Kilham reminded me so powerfully of my relationship with my cat, I just constantly had to laugh. Just this week the little monster discovered (after four tries, so don't underestimate their patience and creativity either!) that I will play with her if she brings a toy to me and yowls incessantly; and this just shortly after she feigned indifference until my back was turned and then rushed for the forbidden fruit (in this case out an open door onto the roof; she is, of course, an indoor cat). But we humans have theory of mind too. When she tried it the second time (thankfully now the roof access is successfully closed off), I was ready and caught her. She was shocked and angry and attempted to punish me in a way Squirty would definitely understand and approve of!
7. I am fascinated to learn that all typical bears (pandas are different) have virtually the same "language" of visual, scent, and auditory cues, (even the surviving short-face bear that evolved in the Americas separately from all other living bear species that evolved into their current forms in Asia) meaning both the intelligence and the resource-sharing go way, way back in their evolutionary history. And given the clear Theory of Mind and linguistic skills in cephalopods, not to mention the communal protection and resource-sharing in plants, this sociability seems to be really fundamental to life on a very deep level, and/or is an evolutionary requirement of this beautiful planet and its dynamic interconnected webs of living things. We are so lucky to live here.
8. I refuse to see Grizzly Man for several reasons, but Kilham's observations shed a lot of light onto what happened to Treadwell. He and Huguenard were killed by a hungry male bear unfamiliar with Treadwell and his peculiar and provoking behavior. He was not communicating with the bears properly, which was not clear to him since all the other bears he was harassing had built a peaceful relationship with him over 13 years. The new bear, having not been inured to Treadwell's unusual behavior, reacted completely typically--and was killed for it. He was not "cruel, mindless nature" as Herzog would have it, but an intelligent animal whose communication was not understood. There are no problem bears, only problem humans. And yes, accepting the real nature of top predators (neither senseless and cruel, nor noble and romantic, but living, feeling, and as predictable as any person in a world with so many variables and motivations) is terrifying. But so is flying in an airplane or driving in a car. Bears will be bears, and that is the most wonderful thing about them. That our advanced language can produce guides to living peacefully with said bears, is the most wonderful thing about us.
*Whom Kilham mistakenly identifies as an evolutionary biologist by the way, rather than a linguist with a background in psychology, which he is, in yet another example of a man becoming the most prominent expert in his very narrow field and then deciding he actually knows everything about everything. Rising to the level of their incompetence?
**Of course it should be noted (and this is part of why I don't like the term "altruism"), that (as Kilham's bears show) this resource-sharing is in fact both beneficial to the individual and to the species--and of course it's the species that matters, evolutionarily speaking, not the "selfish genes" of the individual.
***So many people are so eager to separate humanity from other animals. Given that fire, cooking, clothing, advanced tool-making, and probably language dates back at least to Homo erectus, with its much smaller brain, I'm beginning to wonder if all our big brains evolved for is narcissism.
September 7, 2022
Amazing! I have the utmost respect for people with PhD's (the author now has one or will get it very soon), but let's not forget that Jane Goodall was a secretary when she started her work with chimps. Kilham is a genius but his dyslexia made getting a degree difficult. So he started learning from the experts, bears themselves. He knows so many bears personally, including many who are his own hand-reared babies, so his insights into their behavior are illuminating. He also tells his story and discoveries in an approachable way. His advice to deal with bear encounters may sound dangerous, but at least I don't think I'll need it where I live. A great read for animal lovers.
May 21, 2019
Great read full of fascinating information
Kilham describes his approach to raising and releasing black best cubs in detail and includes excellent advice on how to avoid bear confrontation with humans. Along the way he discusses his theory about how best communication among their one species may actually reflect pre-human species behavior that has been suppressed as a result of the manner in which our species has developed management of the food supply. He leaves the reader with many thoughtful points to consider and debate.
Kilham describes his approach to raising and releasing black best cubs in detail and includes excellent advice on how to avoid bear confrontation with humans. Along the way he discusses his theory about how best communication among their one species may actually reflect pre-human species behavior that has been suppressed as a result of the manner in which our species has developed management of the food supply. He leaves the reader with many thoughtful points to consider and debate.
August 17, 2020
Kilham offers an incredible, unique window into the complex social habits of black bears. There were some amazing conclusions drawn about the behavior of these animals, backed up by fascinating observations made by the author. Highly recommend to anyone that is interested in learning more about black bears,and how their social habits are similar to those of humans. A great read for animal lovers!
December 20, 2020
Liked the bear information, especially the slightly different perspective than you might normally get, but there were times when it read like a rambling manifesto. It isn't that there weren't valid points here and there, but I was a little thrown by the constant circling back to "all wars are just humans being too stupid to realize we are just aggressive bears, etc."
March 3, 2022
A captivating, educational and fun book about black bears. The writing was solid, but I thought it could have been a bit more riveting given the stories. But a very minor criticism (as evidenced by the 5 stars). Highly recommend this book to anyone interested in bears, nature, and human and bear interaction.
August 4, 2021
Something about bears piqued my interest a few weeks ago and I decided to give this a read. I was not disappointed! I love the way Kilham writes, because it is not incredibly dense. Great stuff, very interesting!
July 12, 2018
This book was a little more scientific then I thought it would be but I enjoyed listening to every minute of this audio book.
May 18, 2019
Great information on the culture and communication of black bears. Also interesting information about dyslexia and associated experience.
tried-and-do-not-like
July 13, 2019Couldn't get through it, gave up after about 20 pages. It wasn't the right book at the right time, for me.
January 26, 2021
A fun read from a non traditional scientist, had many interesting insights into bears behavior and more.
September 30, 2021
Next to wolves, bears are probably the next animal
early humans watched to learn from on how to survive and to cooperate. Bears teach the lesson of sharing in times of scarcity.
early humans watched to learn from on how to survive and to cooperate. Bears teach the lesson of sharing in times of scarcity.
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October 18, 2024Some very interesting insight into the behavior of bears. The speculation about human society and psychology felt a bit like a detour and/or attempt to fill space, but overall a worthwhile read.
December 29, 2016
What a fantastic book! I picked it up , thinking it might have more information on the relationship between bears and specific plants, and found a treasure house of information re the social life of bears , and how bears have something to teach us there also. The bear is such a great teacher on so many levels - but i just was not expecting these revelations. Highly recommended.
December 30, 2016
Fascinating and informative!
November 10, 2025
The book is very scattered and not organized. It makes it hard to read and I struggled...
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