Wolves, Hyenas, and Group Size
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I just learned, today, that Stephen Herrero was also born in SF* and graduated from Berkeley.
Anyway, he is a Canadian professor emeritus of ecology at the University of Calgary who has researched and published extensively (both research papers and popular books) on bear attacks throughout North America. Group size is a HUGE factor in the risks of attacks with single and pairs of humans constituting the vast majority of serious and fatal attacks.
with, until recently, NO fatal attacks on parties over 4 in size.
Conventional thinking is that bears are intimidated by larger groups but I observe that they’ll wade into the middle of a caribou herd. I think the bigger factor is that 4+ people CAN NOT be quiet. They’re talking over each other, louder and louder. I’ll frequently walk up from behind and right through a large group before they notice me, a quiet solo hiker, while I heard them from hundreds of meters away. Since bears usually try to avoid humans, the added warning time/distance of a large reduces the times the humans even know there is a bear around.
* nice that I found that out on Earthquake Day, April 18th (1906 in SF, witnessed by my grandmother). It’s also Paul Revere’s Ride Day in New England. And my wife’s birthday.
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