Among the Bears : Raising Orphan Cubs in the Wild

by Kilham, Benjamin; Gray, Ed

• ISBN13: 9780805069198
• ISBN10: 0805069194
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-03-06
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• More Book Details
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Summary

A first-person account of wild bear behavior that is both a thrilling animal story and a groundbreaking work of science. In the spring of 1993, Ben Kilham, a naturalist who lives in the woodlands of New Hampshire, began raising a pair of orphaned wild black bears. The experience changed his life. While spending thousands of hours with the cubs, Kilham discovered unknown facets of bear behavior that have radically revised our understanding of animal behavior. Now widely recognized for his contributions to wildlife science, Kilham reveals that bears are altruistic and cooperate with unrelated, even unknown individuals, while our closer relatives, the supposedly more highly evolved chimps, cooperate only within troops of recognizable members. Kilham, who turned a disability, dyslexia, to his advantage as a naturalist, offers fascinating insights into the emotional life of bears. His work-which has been featured in severalNational Geographictelevision specials-also illustrates the powerful black bear intelligence that has survived bounties and overhunting to make them North America's dominant omnivore, familiar to every reader. Beyond the natural history, he introduces individual bears who become enthralling and memorable characters. As in the bestselling books by Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey,Among the Bearsexplores the breaking down of mutual suspicion and building up of trust between species, with its hopeful implications for the shared future of humans and animals in the wild.

Author Biography

Benjamin Kilham is a woodsman and naturalist who over the past twenty-five years has discovered and then field-tested a new, exciting wildlife biology. Ed Gray is a naturalist writer and founder of Gray's Sporting Journal. They both live in Lyme, New Hampshire.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
The First Cubs	1	(9)
The First Walks	10	(5)
The Beginnings of an Education	15	(12)
Delicacies, van Gogh, and a Dark Cloud	27	(7)
Impossible Lessons and the Fabric of Learning	34	(5)
Summertime, and the Living Is Easy	39	(9)
Nature's Bounty and a Long Walk Home	48	(10)
Mysteries, Gunfire, and the Escape Artist	58	(9)
Bear Hunters and Late-Night Dining	67	(7)
Slowing Down	74	(7)
To Den, Finally	81	(6)
Time to Think	87	(4)
A New Year in March	91	(13)
A Very Difficult Month	104	(15)
Moving On	119	(14)
Between the Bears	133	(5)
The Triplets Arrive	138	(28)
Public Notice	166	(3)
The Triplets Grow Up	169	(20)
Squirty Stays Close	189	(8)
Squirty Has Cubs	197	(10)
The Moose Mountain Cubs	207	(4)
Squirty's Dynasty Begins	211	(3)
Confrontation and Resolution	214	(12)
Bears in the Backyard	226	(20)
What Is It About a Bear?	246	(29)
Epilogue	275	(2)
Acknowledgments	277	(2)
Index	279

Excerpts

Because we had two females this time we needed names to distinguish them. We named one Curls for the curly hair on her forehead; the other, who was smaller, became Squirty. The boy we left at that-The Boy. Almost immediately they began to show not only their physically distinguishing marks, but their personalities as well. Within a month, while the cubs were still upstairs, The Boy began escaping from the pen and letting loose with a series of distress calls as soon as he found himself separated from his sisters, who would then try to join him. Already he was showing himself to be the explorer of the group.

One of the immediate differences I could see between raising these new cubs and the first two was that I could now recognize their behaviors as they developed. Whenever they were scared, either by a sound or a smell, they would "tree" to the highest pillow on the bed or on me if I were with them, all the way up to my head and shoulders. They suckled my ears and fingers and wrestled to bond with each other and with me. In my case they wrestled with my hand, but I knew what it meant. Even today-in her sixth year and at times well over two hundred pounds-when I meet her in the woods every spring, Squirty and I wrestle to get reaquainted.

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Excerpted from Among the Bears: Raising Orphaned Cubs in the Wild by Benjamin Kilham, Ed Gray
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