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If you offer a bear a chocolate bar one day, and the bear is not very hungry, he will take the chocolate bar. If you offer the same bear a chocolate bar and he happens to be very hungry, he will probably take your hand as well. To the bear, it does not matter. He is hungry, you provide the food. Being omnivorous, bears adapt to take whatever is on offer. There is nothing personal, the bear neither likes nor dislikes you but you provide for his needs.

To think people can live in harmony with bears on a close up and personal level is a mistake. To think we can live with bears close by in their own, bear exclusive place, is far better.

People have lived with bears for thousands of years. Native Americans gave bears respects, honoured their strength and adaptability and used their skins and flesh wnen they could get it, to keep themselves warm and fed. Yet they never threatened bears seriously, they respected the bears' way of life and understood them, even having bear deities to protect that help them.

Modern man, on the other hand either want bears to be available for viewing or to live closely with man. Bears on the other hand prefer to be as far from mankind as possible. They will, of course, eat their food if it is left in cars, in dumpsters or strewn on the ground but they do not form relationships with people , at least those of the kind we seem to crave.

A bear is not 'cuddly'- they have fur to keep warm and to protect them. They do not 'bond' with people, except in very rare circumstances and while a few people live apparently in close contact with bears, there is never a guarantee that those same bears who frolick and lie with them one day, will not turn and bite the hand that feeds them the next - they are bears.

There have been documentaries about people living with bears in Canada for 6 months of the year and bringing up a polar bear from a cub, swimming with it and apparently showing the bears displaying affection and respect in return but even those people are keen to acknowledge that it is their anthropomorphism which has put upon the bear emotional charactsterisics and they actually have little idea what the bear is really thinking or capable of. It is this kind of understanding that will, hopefully, keep both parties safe. There are also domented records of those who have lived among bears for a long time and thought they understood them being attacked and killed by those same bears they thought they understood.

We cannot live in close harmoney with bears but we can live alongside them, so long as we do not expect bears to be pets and so long as we give these large, adaptable yet incredibly vulnerable and fragile animals the room and understanding they need.

Learn more about this author, Sammy Stein.
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