Come and meet the bears

Not featured 

"Meet the Bears" is a BBC documentary from 2020. It´s part of a longer series called "Natural World". It´s not *the* most interesting docu in the (un-natural) world, but if you are a bear super-aficionado (a latter day John Muir, say), you might nevertheless find it to your liking. Kids who think bears are just huge cuddly toys might also find it funny, I suppose...

In little less than 60 minutes, we get to meet grizzlies (or perhaps brown bears) in Alaska, black bears somewhere else in North America, and polar bears in the Arctic. Shorter landfalls are made in Asia and South America. Yes, the panda is included, and so is "the real life Baloo", the sloth bear of India. There are even bears in Japan! Not included: the oversized Kodiak bear (sometimes shown in horror flicks) and the Kermode spirit bear. Maybe next time? 

The main take away from this production is that bears are extremely smart. The narrator at one point compares their intelligence to that of apes! (That is a compliment in a nature documentary.) The black bears featured can certainly open a car door and abscond with a bag of fresh apples the car-owner was careless enough to leave behind. Being omnivorous, bears are also surprisingly adaptable. They can graze like cows one minute, only to attack bee-hives for the honey the next, and then its off to the nearest human settlement to do some dumpster-diving! The exception that proves the rule is the panda, which lives almost exclusively on bamboo. 

Ursids can climb, too. Polar bears, despite their enormous size, can climb steep cliffs with ease. Bears must have been pretty contended having most of the planet to themselves (OK, maybe they had to share it with dire wolves and saber-toothed cats) before Homo sapiens came around and spoiled the party, even stealing the honey and the blue-berries...

Of course, Ursidae sometimes get their revenge, killing us and feasting on our tender flesh, but that aspect of the human-bear interface isn´t mentioned in this particular production.

My own personal take away from "Meet the Bears" is how easy it must be to misidentify a bear as a squatch. Yes, really! Young bears in particular can look almost "humanoid" when they stand on their hind legs. Of course, people see Bigfoot even in the dead of winter when bears are supposed to hibernate, so god knows what else might be out there...

With that (admittedly bizarre) reflection I end this review.