Cubs and Manners - Appalachian Bear Rescue

Bear cubs have very different ideas about manners and habits from our own. It’s interesting to observe them using what we might call their innate manners as they deal with their lives at ABR.

A good example is Dandelion raking the bedding in her pen. In the wild, bears use their formidable claws to rake leaves into a comfy daybed or to dig for insects. In the Cub Nursery, there are towels lining the bottom of the pen, and Dandelion instinctively rakes the towels to make the bed more to her liking.

Dandelion rearranges her bedding by raking the towels.

She and Bentley went to the other side of the pen to sleep. They are sleeping a lot, which will help them to recover from their early deprivation.

Speaking of instinctive manners, what do we see in the Cub House when it is meal time?

Breakfast is served in a sparkling clean room.

The second room is also pristine and waits for the cubs’ arrival.

The cubs arrive and busy themselves with eating.

Scattered food and upended bowls – what happened to the clean, neat dining room?

After breakfast. They even left some “tips” for the servers (curators). Bears have their own version of “manners.”

Bears’ manners and etiquette are foreign to us, but to be honest, our use of bowls for food is very foreign to them. In bowls or not, the cubs do like to eat. Eating = Chubbifying, which is just what they need to do!