Bears Are Among Most Flexible, Clever Species; Some Use Tools To Get Food

Bears are smart and skilled, according to experts. These mammals reportedly exceeded the scientists' expectations of them.

Bears Can Use Tools To Hunt For Food

A new study has revealed that some bear species can use tools to obtain food, with one polar bear being observed battering a seal with a block of ice, a skill generally reserved for the most intellectual creatures. According to Chris Newman, an ecologist at the University of Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, there are fundamentally two forms of intelligence — practical and social.

Socially intelligent animals typically live in groups, and this is frequently connected to the type of food they eat. Instead of hoarding food independently, some animals hunt in social groups and share it, whereas practical intelligence is frequently associated with agility and the capacity to manage the environment.

This is a characteristic of climbing mammals, which can hold objects in place with their climbing "hands" and have a hip structure that enables them to stand for extended periods on two feet to use their hands. Primates, who can also utilize opposable thumbs to grasp tools, are examples of this practical and social intelligence.

Bears are solitary creatures that hunt and live alone, except when caring for their cubs. They are also highly specialized and capable of prospering in their settings. In recent years, it has been shown that they use simple tools.

According to Newman, they can stand upright and do complex forepaw maneuvers because they climb (or, in the case of polar bears, their recent ancestors did). However, they excel in their sense of smell. They can detect a carcass, a seal under the ice, or a rucksack with a chocolate bar from great distances. This makes them formidable, especially when combined with their immense strength, as evidenced by the numerous accounts of bears smashing into cars.

In another study by Oakland University comparative psychologist Jennifer Vonk, black bears may also learn to distinguish between notions like primates and non-primates and animals and landscapes. Moreover, they could relate the quantity of objects seen in an animal to actual numbers. For instance, they discovered that obtaining three almonds in an image matched receiving three almonds in reality.

"I do think bears are amongst the most flexible and clever species, but there is so much we don't know," Vonk said. "For example, we know very little about their social cognition - how they read others' intentions and emotions."

Intelligence in Animals

However, bears' ability to use tools doesn't make them geniuses. According to Ivo Jacobs, a researcher in cognitive zoology at Lund University, using tools is a "very broad behavior" associated with cognition, which could only be inferred from proper experiments. Additionally, some animals use tools due to their instincts.

He added that other animals, like insects, throw sand at their prey just like bears throw stones. It's still too early for Jacobs to conclude about the bears' intelligence. However, he was impressed with what they witnessed from the animal.

According to Newman, cognitive aptitude is done to see if animals can understand changes in size and quantity. The distinction between which is somewhat bigger is more difficult than between lots vs. few, massive vs. tiny, or big vs. small. He is still unsure if a bear could determine which of the two large picnic baskets left on the park seat offers a greater prospective food reward than the four smaller ones.

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