American Black Bears

Dr. Arjun Dheer gives us some ancient natural history.

Historically, California had, you know, saber tooth, you know, cats and grizzly bears and giant ground sloths and just much larger animals that, you know, American black bears had to deal with.

So, you know, being secluded and being safe is very important for them, having a safe refuge.

And humans, you know, are the major cause of bear mortality to this day.

You know, they do have an apex predator that they have to deal with, which is us.

The Ursidae family, bears in general, evolved originally in Eurasia.

And, you know, they're all related to each other.

And during the Pleistocene, you know, they kind of came over that land bridge when, you know, ocean levels were much lower.

There was much larger, you know, polar ice caps.

And so did humans.

You know, the indigenous people to, you know, the Americas originally came from Eurasia tens of thousands of years ago.

And so there were long history, many interactions with bears.

And, you know, sometimes friendly, sometimes not.

And, you know, competing for the same resources, you know, seeing each other as potential threats.

And so there's been this kind of co-evolution, very complex relationship between humans and bears.

Our diets are very similar.

We're not too dissimilar in terms of size, in terms of, you know, being able to stand upright and having very dexterous, you know, hands or paws.

And there's a lot of similarities there.

And I think there's a lot of mutual respect in that sense between the species.

The same denning areas, I mean, the same caves.

So you have that in Europe as well.

People... trying to compete for the same cave sites as cave hyenas or cave bears in parts of Europe.

So humans and large carnivores in general have had a really intricate and complex relationship for really long.

That's just such a great story, isn't it? It should be told more because I feel like in the modern times, there's more of a fear of bears and more of a sort of a, it's such a beautiful story, really, that they're as close to us as dogs.

Right, right.