Note: This program first aired October 25, 2014.
I’ve been trying to avoid election propaganda and
advertising this election cycle, not having a TV goes a long way towards that
goal. As a naturalist though, it is hard to miss the rhetoric around the
upcoming referendum about bear hunting methods here in the state of Maine. Bear
baiting in particular got me thinking about how we’re really not so different,
the bears and us.
Bear baiting is a hunting method where by food is left in
the woods consistently in an attempt to attract the bear and train it to return
to the same spot repeatedly during the hunting season. The hunter hides in a
blind near by and shoots the bear when it returns. Here in Maine the season for
hunting with bait is most of the month of September, and the
baiting/habituating process can begin as early as the end of July. Typically
the food used is old fast food, fryolator grease, and donuts and pastries,
though really anything can be used.
So why does bear baiting work? And by work I mean, bears
come to eat the food. The obvious answer is that they are hungry. As wild
animals they spend their entire lives looking for something to eat. For bears,
their need is even more extreme. They need to eat enough to not only survive,
but also get obese enough to survive a winter of not eating. In the wild they
work hard to get these calories from berries and other fruits, insects both adult
and larval, live prey and scavenged carrion. Up to 90% of their diet is plant
based, mainly fruits, which come in waves during the growing season.
Strawberries, then pin cherries, then blue berries, then raspberries, then
choke cherries, you get the idea. With this in mind it isn’t a great leap to
hypothesize that bears are adapted to seek out sweet flavors, if fruits make up
as much as 90% of their caloric intake.
I know another animal that seeks out sweet flavors, and like
the bear, this habit can be its undoing. Humans are adapted by evolution to
seek out sweet flavors, salty flavors and fats. These three tastes represent
nutrients that were extremely limited or difficult to come by in our
evolutionary history. By evolving a preference for them we have trained our
cells to seek them out. This by the way is another way to define addiction, and
it is no exaggeration to state that humans are addicted to sweet, salts and
fats. But being addicted to something that is very limited in the environment,
not to mention also beneficial in small quantities, isn’t so bad a thing. The
problem of course is that these nutrients are no longer limited in the
environment, but we are still addicted to them. This fact, along with changes
to our microbiomes, sedentary lifestyles and increases in chronic estrogenic
chemical exposures have led to the obesity epidemic we face today.
Bears, just like us, seek out sweet and fat, a slave to their
genes. They, unlike most of us, are seeking obesity. Baiting bears with donuts
holds up a strange sad mirror, reflecting poorly on our own sad lives. Their
weakness, their physiologic need mirrors our own, with bad results for both of
us. Bears love donuts, and so do we.
References:
About black bears: http://www.esf.edu/aec/adks/mammals/black_bear.htm
Michael Moss’s book about the flavors we are drawn to: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/books/review/salt-sugar-fat-by-michael-moss.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
