Featured activities
Are bear bells worth a jingle?
In preliminary study, Katmai browns didn't flinch at researcher's noise
By Elizabeth Manning / Anchorage Daily News
For years, conventional wisdom has advised people to make noise to avoid dangerous surprises while traveling in Alaska bear country. For those who choose not to talk, sing, clap or bang on a cook pot, that usually means wearing bear bells, a tried-and-true hiker's accessory.
But do the bells really work, or work the way we think they do, a federal bear researcher asks. Though he emphasizes that it's too soon to draw any broad or definitive conclusions, Tom Smith of the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center has tested a group of brown bears that seemed to pay bells no mind at all.
Over several days last fall, while doing other research about bear behavior along the coast of Katmai National Park, Smith hid in a blind near a well-traveled bear path and pulled on fishing line attached to a string of bells tied to an alder bush. Not one bear looked in the direction of the noise or even perked up its ears, Smith said.
''This doesn't mean bear bells don't work,'' he said. ''It just means the bears didn't respond the way we thought they would. Not one of them reacted to the bells at all. It's fascinating stuff.''
Smith said he first tinkled the bells lightly. The bears didn't respond. Then he yanked on the line, making a jangling noise ''almost as loud a fire alarm.'' Fifteen groups of one or more bears walked past. Not one flinched.
He didn't think the bears were deaf, but he wondered. So he snapped a pencil to mimic the sound of a twig breaking. The bears immediately turned and looked at the biologist's blind, about 150 feet away. A loud huff, mimicking the noise of another bear, elicited a similar response.
The lack of reaction to the bells doesn't prove anything, Smith said. Other factors could have contributed, including a relative lack of aggressiveness in Katmai bears compared with other Alaska brown bears.
Still, the results are intriguing enough that Smith wants to investigate further.
He emphasized that it is premature to tell people to stop wearing bear bells. They certainly might help in some circumstances, he said. Bears in some places might learn to associate bell sounds with humans, he said.
Smith spends most of his time studying brown bear behavior and bear-human interactions. Along the way he has made some observations that have led him to take a closer look at long-held assumptions about how bears see, hear and smell.
He is the same researcher who discovered two years ago that pepper spray, sold as bear repellent, can attract bears if used improperly. In effect he found that the bears seemed to like the taste or smell if the repellent was sprayed on the ground or an object, not directly in the face.
Because brown bears are naturally curious, Smith thought they would approach the bells to investigate. Why would they ignore them? Maybe, he said, bears tune out tinkling just as they might tune out other nonthreatening background noises, like birds singing or a stream gurgling.
|
