Case 9. Silver King's Memory of His Capture. At this moment we have a huge polar bear who refuses to forget that he was captured in the water, in Kane Basin, and who now avoids the water in his swimming pool, almost as much as any burned child dreads fire. Throughout the hottest months of midsummer old Silver King lies on the rock floor of his huge and handsome den, grouching and grumbling, and not more than once a week enjoying a swim in his spacious pool. No other polar bear of ours ever manifested such an aversion for water. The other polar bears who have occupied that same den loved that pool beyond compare, and used to play in its waters for hours at a time. Evidently the chase of Silver King through green arctic water and over ice floes, mile after mile, his final lassoing, and the drag behind a motor boat to the ship were, to old Silver King, a terrible tragedy. Now he regards all deep water as a trap to catch bears, but, strange to relate, the winter's snow and ice seem to renew his interest in his swimming pool. Occasionally he is seen at play in the icy water, and toying with pieces of ice.
Memory in Bears. I think that ordinarily bear memory for human faces and voices is not long. Once I saw Mr. William Lyman Underwood test the memory of a black bear that for eighteen months had been his household pet and daily companion. After a separation of a year, which the bear spent in a public park near Boston, Mr. Underwood approached, alone, close up to the bars of his cage. He spoke to him in the old way, and called him by his old name, but the bear gave absolutely no sign of recognition or remembrance.
How a Wild Grizzly Bear Caches Food. The silver-tip grizzly bear of the Rocky Mountains has a mental trait and a corresponding habit which seems to be unique in bear character. It is the habit of burying food for future use. Once I had a rare opportunity to observe this habit. It was in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, in the month of September(1905), while bears were very activism. John M. Phillips and I shot two large white goats, one of which rolled down a steep declivity and out upon the slide- rock, where it was skinned. The flensed body of the other was rolled over the edge of a cliff, and fell on a brushy soil-covered spot about on the same level as the remains of goat No. 1.
The fresh goat remains were promptly discovered by a lusty young grizzly, which ate to satiety from Goat No. 1. With the remains of. Goat No. 2 the grizzly industriously proceeded to establish a cache of meat for future use.
The goat carcass was dragged to a well chosen spot of seclusion on moss-covered earth. On the steep hillside a shallow hole was dug, the whole carcass rolled into it, and then upon it the bear piled nearly a wagon load of fresh earth, moss, and green plants that had been torn up by the roots. Over the highest point of the carcass the mass was twenty-four inches deep. On the ground the cache was elliptical in shape, and its outline measured about seven by nine feet. On the lower side it was four feet high, and on the upper side two feet. The cache was built around two larch saplings, as if to secure their support. On the uphill side of the cache the ground was torn up in a space shaped like a half moon, twenty-eight feet long by nineteen wide.
I regard that cache as a very impressive exhibit of ursine thought, reasoning and conclusion. It showed more fore-thought and provision, and higher purpose in the conservation of food than some human beings ever display, even at their best. The plains Indians and the buffalo hunters were horribly wasteful and improvident. The impulse of that grizzly was to make good use of every pound of that meat, and to conserve for the future.
Survival of the Bears.—The bears of North America have survived thirty thousand years after the lions and the sabre-toothed tigers of La Brea perished utterly and disappeared. But there were bears also in those days, as the asphalt pits reveal. Now, why did not all the bears of North America share the fate of the lions and the tigers? It seems reasonable to answer that it was because the bears were wiser, more gifted in the art of self-preservation, and more resourceful in execution. In view of the omnivorous menu of bears, and their appalling dependence upon small things for food, it is to me marvelous that they now maintain themselves with such astounding success.
A grizzly will dig a big and rocky hole three or four feet deep to get one tiny ground-squirrel, a tidbit so small that an adult grizzly could surely eat one hundred of them, like so many plums, at one sitting. A bear will feed on berries under such handicaps that one would not be surprised to see a bear starve to death in a berry-patch.
But almost invariably the wild bear when killed is fairly well fed and prosperous; and I fancy that no one ever found a bear that had died of cold and exposure. The cunning of the black bear in self- preservation surpasses that of all other large mammal species of North America save the wolf, the white-tailed deer and the coyote. In the game of self-preservation I will back that quartet against all the other large land animals of North America.
What Constitutes Comfortable Captivity. It is impossible for any man of good intelligence to work continuously with a wild animal without learning something of its thoughts and its temper.