This group is the Bears, and it is a very curious one in many ways. For, in the first place, though they are large and strong animals, they have very much given up eating flesh-food, and have taken to berries and acorns, fruits, vegetables, and honey. To get this last they even climb the trees to dig out the comb with their paw, trusting to their thick shaggy hair to protect them from the stings, which, however, they sometimes receive rather heavily on the nose.
Fig. 78.
Polar Bear[177] and Walrus.[178]
Showing how the Bear walks with the heel flat on the ground, and the Walrus also.
A glance at a bear’s mouth will tell at once that he is partly a vegetarian, for his hind teeth are smoothed down, and as he eats he can move his lower jaw slightly from side to side, so as to chew vegetable food. Even the Polar Bear, which eats little else but fish and seals, has these same grinding teeth, and he can be fed for a long time upon bread; while it is found that he keeps in better health when in zoological gardens if he has some grass occasionally. Still it is only the Sun Bears and Sloth Bears in India and Malacca which never eat flesh, for the Bruin of our northern countries often varies his food with deer or sheep, and grows more ferocious and flesh-feeding as he grows in years. It would almost seem as if his very laziness and awkward gait may have led him to take to vegetarianism as a convenient change, when animal food was not handy. For though a bear can trot along at a good pace, yet his heavy lumbering body and long foot with the whole heel touching the ground[179] (see [Fig. 78]), make him decidedly not well fitted for a hunting animal.
How different he looks from the slim wolf running on the tips of his toes, and the graceful tiger bending his long hind legs for a leap! Yet he is a formidable animal too, for his muscles are tremendously strong, and his firmly-planted foot enables him to rise upon his hind legs and give that deadly embrace which drives the breath out of the body of his victim.
The wolf attacks with his teeth, the lion strikes with his paw, but the bear hugs his enemy to death; and here his long stiff claws serve him well, for though he cannot draw them in to keep them sharp, yet they are rough and jagged, and inflict dreadful wounds. The great Grizzly Bear of America, which is sometimes nine feet long, and strong enough to drag along the carcase of a bison, sticks his front claws into his prey while he tears the flesh with the hind feet; he is the only one, except the polar bear, which lives principally upon animal food.
In fact, the bears take much the same place in the animal world that heavy phlegmatic men do among ourselves; easy-going, but dangerous if roused, they seem to have succeeded in life more by accommodating themselves to things as they have found them, than by conquering and taking by force like the wolves and tigers. Thus a bear roams leisurely through the thick forest, for few animals care to meddle with him and he feeds wherever food comes easy, especially in the autumn when fruits abound and he can grow fat; and then he lies down to sleep in a cave or hollow tree, or in a nest of moss and leaves, till spring comes round again. Why should he trouble himself to struggle with difficulties? Unless, indeed, food is scarce, and then he sometimes has an uneasy winter, or attacks animals he would otherwise leave alone.
But if once he is roused, or if a she-bear is afraid that her cubs may be attacked, then you see that under the lazy good-nature there is plenty of pluck and ferocity. He would rather be let alone, for he looks upon life as a thing to enjoy and take leisurely, but if you will have a struggle then he will see who is master. And this kind of philosophy, somewhat easy for strong powerful creatures, has stood Bruin in good stead, for he has spread over all countries where there are thick forests, except Africa and Australia; and with his great strength and shaggy coat must have been very safe from attack till man came to annoy and worry him.