Yellow-Yellow defeats BearVault 500

[Waumbek]

Yellow-Yellow, a small and shy female bear in the High Peaks named for the color of her two ear tags, has learned how to open the BearVault 500. The 550 model is in progress.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/nyregion/25bear.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

 

[beverly]

It's nice...

...to wake up to this on the front page of the NY Times online, with a picture of Marcy Dam - recognizable right away

The number of “negative human-bear interactions,” according to the Department of Environmental Conservation — mainly incidents in which bears approached people looking for food — dropped to 61 last year in the eastern High Peaks from 374 in 2005.

It's a good thing not all the bears are as smart as Yellow-Yellow

 

[Waumbek]

I wonder if Yellow-Yellow has passed her smart gene on to any offpspring.

 

[teejay]

Smart gene?

Hah. Wait'll she gets on the Internet.

teejay

 

[una_dogger]

Great article, wish there was a picture of Yellow-Yellow though!

 

[DougPaul]

I wonder if Yellow-Yellow has passed her smart gene on to any offpspring.

Smart gene?
Hah. Wait'll she gets on the Internet.

The bears already have the smart gene.

The bear internet works by mama passing her skills down to her offspring*. And if a skill makes a bear fitter, then bears with the skill are likely to displace those without...

* Thus it is a one-way tree-structured network. (This is for the geeks... )

Doug

 

[skiguy]

Not directly on topic but related. I've been mostly Day Hiking as of late in the ADK and have not had the need for a Bear Vault; but I am looking at doing some Backpacking later this season. Question: What is the current policy of the DEC regarding Bear Vaults and what Model of Vault is considered to be to current DEC standards? Thanks in advance.

 

[ADKdremn]

I'm pretty sure all Bear Vaults have the same lid so they all have the possibility of being broken in to. Your best bet is the Garcia's which you need a coin or screw driver to open. This is the brand that the Mountaineer and Loj use as rental.
FWIW, I used a Bear Vault last summer at Flowed Lands without incident....not that I'm saying people should continue to use them.

 

[1ADAM12]

I'm pretty sure all Bear Vaults have the same lid so they all have the possibility of being broken in to. Your best bet is the Garcia's which you need a coin or screw driver to open. This is the brand that the Mountaineer and Loj use as rental.
FWIW, I used a Bear Vault last summer at Flowed Lands without incident....not that I'm saying people should continue to use them.

HAHAHAHA and mine was right next to yours untouched as well. Although I have the Garcia. You may have had to pay me for the use of my food if yours was eaten

 

[teejay]

Other bears and the BearVault®

I'm pretty sure all Bear Vaults have the same lid so they all have the possibility of being broken in to.

Not all BearVaults® have the same lid. It is the lid design that BV has been improving to thwart the bears. I have one of the older models, the BV250. Later design lids will not fit it.

In anticipation of an overnight trip into the Uphill/Feldspar area, I emailed DEC in Ray Brook about the possibility of Yellow-Yellow showing up there. I was told that there are now other bears roaming the Eastern High Peaks that have learned to open the BV and that I'd be advised to rent the Garcia canister. (Incidently, I emailed DEC yesterday evening after business hours and received a reply early this morning.)

As to how these bears learned or acquired this knowledge, I can only speculate, be it a smart gene, Internet access or Doug Paul's evolution in action. Once there is universal use of foolproof canisters, though, this acquired skill will have no useful value to current and future generations and it will quickly be forgotten and the bears will return to their natural food sources. Devolution??

teejay

 

[DougPaul]

As to how these bears learned or acquired this knowledge, I can only speculate, be it a smart gene, Internet access or Doug Paul's evolution in action. Once there is universal use of foolproof canisters, though, this acquired skill will have no useful value to current and future generations and it will quickly be forgotten and the bears will return to their natural food sources. Devolution??

The bears can smell the food no matter how well you wrap it so they know the food is there. They apply trial and error (bite it, gnaw on it, claw it, slam it, jump on it, etc) repeatedly. If their efforts never succeed, they don't try as much. If their efforts succeed even once, they become very persistent and eventually learn specifically what they did to get the food. Mama certainly passes the skills on to the cubs and perhaps they can also learn by watching others. (The same general paradigm applies to hung food, too.)

There are several methods for extinguishing the skill. One would be for all hikers to secure their food in ways that the bear has no chance of getting it. Moms may still teach their offspring to attack canisters for a few generations, but if it stops working, the skill may eventually die out. But at least a few bears will continue to test canisters and they can always relearn the skill if given the opportunity. And, of course, getting humans to be 100% effective at protecting their food isn't very likely...

Another method would be to apply some form of aversion "therapy". If we packed some sort of poison with our food (in a way that the bear could not separate it from the food), the bear might learn that while human food smells good, it makes one sick (or dead). (For instance, bears in certain places out west have learned that rangers shoot them with rubber bullets so they run from uniformed people.) Of course, an occasional human might also eat the poison too...

A third method is "human directed evolution". If we killed any bear that touched our food (or wandered near us), eventually only bears that were afraid of anything related to humans would remain. (I have read that this is essentially what has happened in Europe.) I understand that bears in places where they are hunted similarly tend to shy away from humans.

A final method (that is in current use in some places) is to trap and transport problem bears to remote areas. This is only partly effective because the problem bears often return to the place where the problems occurred. (The bears are sometimes killed after they return some number of times. The bears also learn to stay out of traps and the method becomes less effective after several repeats.)


So there are multiple strategies for combating the problem. Unfortunately some (probably including the most effective) strategies involve harming the bear. And some of the others require 100% proper behavior of humans which isn't likely to happen.

And, of course, keeping people with food out of areas inhabited by bears would also solve the problem, but I doubt that this solution would be very popular among those who frequent this website...

Doug

 

[Little Rickie]

A third method is "human directed evolution". If we killed any bear that touched our food (or wandered near us), eventually only bears that were afraid of anything related to humans would remain. (I have read that this is essentially what has happened in Europe.) I understand that bears in places where they are hunted similarly tend to shy away from humans.

Wouldn't that be the most humane thing to do in the long run?

Now I know that is not going to be popular with a lot of folks and I don't want to start a wildfire on the forum about this but bears are hunted anyway and they are not endangered.

I'm not a hunter but I don't have a problem with hunters.

I've been visited by bears at my camp site and they have chewed on my canaster but have never had a problem encounter with a bear.

Mods...if you want to delete this I understand.

 

[TCD]

On the aversion track: How about setting out a quantity of booby trapped canisters with something that would scare the bear, but not seriously harm it? For example, a bad smelling agent, or a flash and a loud bang, or maybe even a bunch of hornets? You could label these canisters with a printed warning, so not too many humans would accidentally pick them up and open them. Make up 50 or so of these, with some peanut butter or tuna fish smeared on them, and seed them throughout the Colden corridor. See what happens.

Might be inetersting to accompany each of them with a motion activated IR video game camera.

 

[Neil]

And, of course, keeping people with food out of areas inhabited by bears would also solve the problem, but I doubt that this solution would be very popular among those who frequent this website...

Doug

I can think of a few people I'd want to keep out.

 

[DougPaul]

On the aversion track: How about setting out a quantity of booby trapped canisters with something that would scare the bear, but not seriously harm it? For example, a bad smelling agent, or a flash and a loud bang, or maybe even a bunch of hornets? You could label these canisters with a printed warning, so not too many humans would accidentally pick them up and open them. Make up 50 or so of these, with some peanut butter or tuna fish smeared on them, and seed them throughout the Colden corridor. See what happens.

Modern liability being what it is, I suspect that booby traps are a bad idea. One would have to be very careful in how one does it, if at all.

Getting the details right could also be tricky. The goal would be to develop an aversion to all human food, not just peanut butter or tuna.

There is a very basic aversion response in some (many?) animals (including humans*) where eating something and becoming sick immediately afterward can cause a life-long aversion to the food even if it isn't the cause of the reaction. Since much of the time the food is the cause of the reaction, this can be helpful in protecting the animal from a repeat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_aversion

* I have heard of a (human) chocoholic developing a long-term aversion to chocolate through this process.

One might be able to create the aversion response by "salting" food with a harmless nausea inducing agent or at least a unpleasant association.

I am not aware of anyone actually doing this and according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_aversion "The use of conditioned taste aversion in wildlife management has so far been resisted by governmental wildlife managers, mainly because of a lack of understanding of the process."

Doug

 

[ADKdremn]

On the aversion track: How about setting out a quantity of booby trapped canisters with something that would scare the bear, but not seriously harm it? For example, a bad smelling agent, or a flash and a loud bang, or maybe even a bunch of hornets? You could label these canisters with a printed warning, so not too many humans would accidentally pick them up and open them. Make up 50 or so of these, with some peanut butter or tuna fish smeared on them, and seed them throughout the Colden corridor. See what happens.

I have seen this done before. About 5 or so years ago while camping at the Loj there was a problem bear. One night the campsite next to us was having a good old time til this particular bear decided he was hungry. He scattered the people and promptly sat on the picnic table devouring everything in sight. The next night the DEC baited a cooler with food and something that would make the bear sick hoping that it would not continue being a nuisance. Not sure if it worked or not or even if this is something they still do.

 

[Snowflea]

Yellow-Yellow, a small and shy female bear in the High Peaks named for the color of her two ear tags, has learned how to open the BearVault 500.

Maybe the bear was even more tempted because she could SEE all the goodies (PopTarts? Snickers? Jerky??) inside. The BearVault in the linked photo is transparent after all.

I use the Wild Ideas Bearikade for backpacking in the Sierras, home of very smart bears: http://www.wild-ideas.net/index2.html I believe it is the most lightweight bear can on the market, and the lid closes flush with the rest of the can (need a coin to open). Would be very interesting to see a bear evolve to open it... then again, I would never rule that possibility out.

Sierra black bears are very, very intelligent. Even if a cooler has never been used before--and, therefore, without food odors--bears know that coolers = food. You can even be cited for leaving one visible in your car. (It happened to friends of mine who had gotten one as a wedding present and left it in plain view in their car at a Yosemite parking lot while hiking the JMT for their honeymoon. A bear saw the cooler, broke into their vehicle, and *they* got fined.) Consequently, almost all trailheads and campsites have bear boxes, and hikers are required to put "anything with a scent" inside them while hiking. This includes food, sunscreen, toiletries, lip balm, baby wipes...

It's all about protecting not only people's property, but perhaps more importantly the bears by preventing them from becoming dependent on human food.

 

[Tom Rankin]

I wonder if Y-Y could open a bear vault if it had a combination lock on it?

 

[teejay]

Help us.

I wonder if Y-Y could open a bear vault if it had a combination lock on it?

Only if it had the combination, obviously. Camp Peggy O'Brien has a combination lock and the bear hasn't gotten in there, has it? End of problem.

teejay

 

[Jay H]

Has yellow-yellow defeated Teejay's coffee pot???

Jay