The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

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.