Bear Outsmarts Engineers

gyrogeerloose writes "The San Diego Union-Tribune reports in a New York Times wire service story that a black bear known as 'Yellow-Yellow' (named for the two yellow ear tags she sports) has solved the problem of opening a food container that was previously thought to be bear-proof. The container, known as The Bear Vault, was constructed in a manner similar to a child-proof pill bottle, and had passed tests at zoos where bears were given a certain time to break in. The only bears able to open it were grizzlies large and strong enough to rip the lid off using brute force — up to several years ago, when campers in the High Peaks region of New York's Adirondack Mountains started reporting successful break-ins. A redesigned canister was introduced last year; Yellow-Yellow, a relatively petite 120-pound black bear, figured that one out too. The manufacturer is working on a new design expected to be released next year. New York state officials have agreed to test it by filling it with food and placing it in Yellow-Yellow's territory."

Comments

Do we really want to go down this path?

[Locke2005]

Keep this up, and eventually evolution will create bears able to pick door locks with their claws.

Ursine penetration tester . . .

[Q-Cat5]

Just what we need, bears smart enough to capitalize on zero-day exploits.

bear-proof is oxymoron

[Anonymous Coward]

Bears routinely open "bear-proof" garbage bins. I've had to bear-proof mine by locking them in my garage. This is hardly news.

The MSM are really Creationists

[jvv62]

Whenever I read a story like this one, I get the feeling that the author, in his or her heart of hearts, is completely in tune with the creationist types who consider the standard Genesis story to be literally true. "God gave man dominion over the animals and ..." I know that I am smarter (in book learnin') than most people, but I also know that most people know more about some thing than I do. In fact, watching small animals around where I live, I know that plenty of birds and rabbits and squirrels know more about my immediate neighborhood than I do.

So why does every story about an animal figuring out something like this sound like a miracle has occurred? Animals, especially most mammals, learn how to do things to survive. Humans learn better than most other animals, but the animals still learn about a lot of different things. Yes, it's a news story when a bear opens a "bear-proof" canister. No, the engineers aren't stupid. No, the bear isn't a freak of nature. Yes, the bear is smarter than most.

Why can't there be smarter and stupider animals? All humans are equally smart? Yeesh.

Re:The MSM are really Creationists

[gyrogeerloose]

Author of the summary here.

Wow, you took the story exactly opposite of what I intended it to be, which is: no matter how highly we may think of ourselves, there's some "lesser" critter out there who will give us a run for our money. In other words, it was written in admiration of Yellow-Yellow's intelligence and skill.

Given the myriad of ways we've managed to screw things up here on earth, I am in no way an advocate of us humans having dominion over much of anything.