ABSTRACT
When two naturalists adopted three orphaned grizzly bear cubs in the Kamchatka wilderness with the intent of returning them to the wild after their first summer, they wondered whether the cubs would be able to discover for themselves how to survive. Aside from protecting them from potentially molesting adult male bears, leaving out food for them to find for a few weeks, and walking the cubs out and about in their wilderness home, the naturalists showed them but one thing: that fish live under water. As they watched, the three cubs automatically knew which plants to eat, how to catch the fish, how to climb trees and rocky slopes and slide down snowbanks – even to seek out a den. It takes considerable intelligence to be a bear, and plenty of practice to become a skilled bear. But evidently much of the skill simply unfolds, through exploration and practice; it does not have to be learned from another bear. Most of the knowledge about how to be a bear is somehow innate.1
