Why Bears Feel Familiar

Carol 0:01

Imagine a creature who stands upright, hugs its young, teaches its children, remembers food locations for years, dreams through winter, and adapts to changing environments. Sound familiar? It should, because in many ways, bears mirror us. Welcome to Animal Sacred Wisdom, a podcast about nature, symbolism, and the wisdom that connects

A Tour Of Eight Bear Species

Carol 0:29

us. Did you know how many bear species there are on this planet? I wasn't sure there were more than five. However, there are eight distinct species of bears alive on Earth right now. There's the polar bear, the bear who has to hunt in winter and can't hibernate and is a marine hunter. There's the American black bear, the most common bear in North America, known for its sense of smell, that is seven times stronger than a bloodhound. Interesting that they are not always black. They can be dark brown, cinnamon, blonde, or a bluish gray. There's the brown bear, which includes the subspecies of grizzlies, and the Kodiak bear, a giant island bear. You'll find these bears across North America, Europe, and Asia. There's a speckled bear, also known as the Andea bear, because it's the only species of bear native to South America. They're black, have small white fur around their eyes resembling glasses. And just like our fingerprints, no two of these bears have the same pattern. They spend a great deal of time in trees, eating leaves and building leafy nests to rest in. Exceptional tree climbers. Then there's the sun bear, which is the smallest bear who lives in Southeast Asia. It weighs just 60 to 150 pounds. It has a short, sleek coat and a distinct golden-orange patch on its chest, which looks like the rising sun. They are the only bears who do not hibernate. Don't let their size fool you. They are half the size of a black bear, but have an incredibly disproportionately high bite force and incredibly long curved claws for ripping tree bark. They have the longest tongue of any bear species, up to 12 inches. This is the bear who specializes, surprise, in extracting ants, termites, and honey from deep inside trees and hives. Then there's the giant panda bear, a bamboo specialist, who live mainly in central China. They have large wrist bones that act like our thumbs do. They can grip and peel bamboo with dexterity resembling humans. There is the sloth bear found in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and it is shaggy and especially adapted for eating termites and ants. And please don't do what I did, confused a sloth with a sloth bear. Drastically different animals. The sloth bear is big, fast, has a long snout for sucking up insects, and is highly aggressive and fearless. The sloth, that is not a bear, is extremely slow and hangs upside down and eats leaves and buds and is found mainly in tropical rainforests in Central America. In the 18th century, because this is how it happened, European naturalists and scientists who classified animals into various families noticed the inward curling claws and thought the bear resembled a sloth. So for clarity, a sloth bear is not a sloth. This demonstrates that the bear is one spirit expressed through many forms. Now that I've given you the bear minimum about some of their distinctive physical characteristics and locations, you may find it interesting to know these eight bears share the same family name, and it's called your surti because they share a coarse set of behavioral, anatomical, and biological traits. They can smell you coming. Their claws don't retract. They've got forward-facing eyes, which is great for depth perception. They have small stubby tails, rounded small ear flaps, and thick coats of hair. I imagine if bear has no teeth,

What Humans Share With Bears

Carol 4:41

there would be a ninth bear called gummy bear. Now I'm going to bear my heart and soul because we humans have so much in common with these creatures. Both humans and bears have seasonal retreats, and winters where both grieve, have illness, experience transitions and healing. Bears withdraw and so do humans. Growth often happens in solitude. Communication is varied and complex like humans. We both huff, grunt, and can roar. Bears hum when they are content. They cry when they are upset, they chuckle when they are happy. We share high intelligence and large brains. We both walk on the soles of our feet, not on our toes, and we can walk barefooted like bears. This provides us both with a deep foundational energy and a deep connection to the earth. Mama Bear is just as protective over her cubs as our mothers are over their children. Baby cubs are born blind, hairless, and helpless. Pretty much describes human babies. They teach them not to be aggressive and that there are boundaries. Mama Bear, like our mother, teaches that love sometimes says no. Perhaps one of the best traits humans and bears share is adaptability. Bears survive in forests, in mountains, on ice and deserts, and humans survive changing careers, loss, aging, and reinventing ourselves. Both bears and humans are highly curious creatures. We feed our intelligence with wondering how does this work? Why did that happen? How to build what we need and where's the

Bear Wisdom Across World Traditions

Carol 6:36

food? Across many traditions, there is the spiritual meaning of bears. Bears elicit introspection, healing, sovereignty, meaning not domination but self-possession, knowing who you are. Courage, grounding, inner wisdom, dreaming and protection. Various cultures refer to them as bear wisdom. Indigenous North Americans, to them, the bear is the original medicine keeper of herbal and medicinal knowledge. The bear has rebirthed through its hibernation cycle with the din symbolizing introspection and self-discovery. Mama Bear's fierce devotion led to bears being seen as the ultimate symbol of protection and warrior spirit. Then there are the Celtic traditions. They too value the bear as a symbol of strength, fierce protection, and its hibernation represents rebirth, transformation, and introspection. The Celts worshipped Artio, that's the bear goddess, as a symbol of abundant nature, fierce, and nurturing motherhood. Indigenous Siberian traditions worship the bear because this animal is viewed as a sacred ancestor, a powerful spiritual mediator, and of course, master of the forests. Their reverence for the bear is rooted in respect, in the need to honor, pacify, and maintain reciprocity with all of nature. And in Japan, there's the Ainu traditions. The bear represents Kamui as a supreme mountain god who occasionally walks the earth in the disguise of an animal. Bear is seen as a divine visitor, giving humans meat and fur in exchange for deep respect, hospitality, and prayer. They do a ritual to ensure that God returns to heaven and also to continue visiting. To them the bear is a blessing. And then there are the Nordic traditions. The bear is revered as a mystical creature, seen as the king of the forest, who possesses a human-like soul. The bear symbolizes indomitable strength, courage, quiet authority, who bridges the gap between the natural wilderness, the human world, and the divine.

The Surprising Origin Of Teddy Bears

Carol 9:06

So what's the takeaway? Humans everywhere around the world notice something sacred in bears. Their uncanny, human-like behaviors, like walking upright, sitting on their bottoms, opening car doors, and holding food with their front paws like hands, and lounging in hammocks, soaking in backyard pools, and looking almost cuddly when they are a 600-pound apex predator. We see ourselves in bears, as in Winnie the Pooh, Paddington, and Smoky Bear, and most famous of all, we have lifelong conditioning to love a teddy bear. The story of where teddy bear comes from is very surprising. The teddy bear was invented to honor President Theodore Roosevelt. It began on a bear hunting trip in Mississippi. All hunters had found and shot a bear except the president. His assistants cornered a bear and tied it to a tree for Roosevelt to shoot. Roosevelt thought this was extremely unsportsmanlike. So he refused to shoot the bear. Roosevelt was a big game hunter and he had them release the bear, who later, because he had been so beat up and terrified, they had to euthanize him. However, the news of Roosevelt refusing to shoot the bear was in almost every newspaper in the country. A cartoonist, Clifford Berryman, lampooned Roosevelt's bear hunt with a lighthearted satire in the Washington Post November 16, 1902. And I'll show you the sketch of that in my blog. The cartoon inspired Morris Mitch Tom, a Brooklyn candy shop owner, to enlist his wife Rose, who made stuffed animals, to create a stuffed toy bear and dedicate it to the president who refused to shoot a bear. He called it Teddy's Bear. He got President Roosevelt's permission to use his name and mass-produced toy bears. The bear was so popular he shut down his candy store and founded the Ideal Toy Company. The Teddy's Bear morphed into a teddy bear and became a worldwide success traced back to Roosevelt's fateful hunting trip in 1902. The powerful man who refused to shoot a helpless animal. An act of compassion that transformed a bear into a symbol of comfort for children around the world. Sometimes the greatest strength is not power over another life. Sometimes it is choosing mercy. I call it kindness.

Kindness And Next Week’s Tease

Carol 11:57

Thank you for listening. I'm Carol Butler. Hope you'll follow me and share with someone who wants to understand and enjoy hearing about our connection to animals in nature. I can barely contain myself announcing next week's episode. Elephant.