This Just In: Bears Learn

Somebody get Colbert.

This NYT story (nogators/nogators gets you in) has some real gems. Twenty-odd years ago, when I camped some, I knew that the right thing to do with food on a campsite was get it out of reach:

[C]ampers often stored food in bags, typically hung from cables slung between trees, which inadvertently made for one-stop shopping for bears.

"They had learned that when they saw a bag in the air, there had to be a rope someplace and they learned to bite or slice the line," said Neil Woodworth, executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club, a conservation and recreation group.

That alone is pretty cool, but it gets better. Now there's a company that makes "bear-proof" canisters that are apparently sort of like giant child-proof medicine bottles. They worked for a while, until one Adironback bear figured them out.

No, I'm not making this up.

The BearVault 500 withstood the ravages of the test bears at the Folsom City Zoo in California. It has stymied mighty grizzlies weighing up to 1,000 pounds in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park.

But in one corner of the Adirondacks, campers started to notice that the BearVault, a popular canister designed to keep food and other necessities safe, was being compromised. First through circumstantial evidence, then from witness reports, it became clear that in most cases, the conqueror was a relatively tiny, extremely shy middle-aged black bear named Yellow-Yellow.

Some canisters fail in the testing stage when large bears are able to rip off the lid. But wildlife officials say that Yellow-Yellow, a 125-pound bear named for two yellow ear tags that help wildlife officials keep tabs on her, has managed to systematically decipher a complex locking system that confounds even some campers.

Also, apparently Yellow-Yellow now has apprentices.

This is both very cool and mildly menacing.