It’s a sunny day with not a cloud in the sky.  We are out on the flats, where there is always more breeze and less bugs, and investigate what’s going on near where the river opens into the ocean.  There are quite a few bears congregating around the area and we sit down to watch a female bear without cubs who we call Dots, because she has a freckled muzzle.  She is wrestling with some sort of fishing cage that is stuck in the sand at the surf’s edge.  At least half of the cage is buried.  Dots is sniffing and circling the cage, trying to find a way in.  It is much smaller than a commercial crab pot that can weigh over 300 lbs empty, but it appears the same type of apparatus.  Dots is sniffing and poking, prying and pulling, trying to figure out a way in. 

She begins to dig around the pot’s edges, shoveling large handfuls of mud and slinging them backwards into the water which has now seeped all around the pot as the tide continues its quick pull inland.  She puts her snout underwater and digs, then holds her head under, looking at the cage under water.  Suddenly, she jumps from the cage, and runs out of the water with a fish dangling from her mouth.  We realize she’s managed to get a fish from inside the cage!  Way to go Dots!  The medium size, triangular fish hangs stiff from her lips.  Who knows how long it has been in that cage?  She drops it and begins gnawing on the chewy fish that resembles a slab of beef jerky. 

After quickly devouring the fish, she returns to the pot and resumes her attempts to get inside.  We can only assume that she has seen or smelled more fish trapped in the cage.  But the incoming tide is rushing in and now the pot is almost entirely submerged.  Dots climbs on top of the cage fervently trying to figure out another way in.  At one point she pulls with an immense amount of effort, yanking at the cage top while her legs are submerged underwater.  She starts to appear visibly frustrated – one foot flails out of the water, as the other leg remains submerged, and she pulls hard appearing exasperated at her lack of success.  We notice her pulling getting more frantic, and she keeps kicking one foot up out of the water. 

Suddenly, we fear she might have gotten her foot caught in the cage.  My stomach knots in panic.  I wonder, what could we do if she is stuck, besides watch her slowly drown?  I’m immediately sick with worry and panic.  But a minute later we see her leap upwards with both feet, and realize she isn’t stuck, or she has managed to get unstuck on her own.  Standing next to the fully submerged cage, she gives a final hard yank.  The cage doesn’t budge, and in what can only be interpreted as frustration, she swings at the water with the force of her entire forearm creating a huge splash.  It reminds me exactly of those splashes we would make playing in the pool as kids - where you would push your whole forearm in a large, long swoop through the surface of the pool water to create as large a splash as possible.  This is the type of splash she made, a full arched swing through her foil – the tide.  Giving the cage a few last shoves, she swings her head one way in a fast, sudden jerk, and then swings it back the opposite direction.  Dots’ violent tosses of the head signal that she is mightily pissed off.  In a frustrated leap she jumps off the cage, and sprints out of the water.  She stomps off and shakes her head back and forth a few more times.  Then she jogs towards the empty holes and sand mounds where she had previously been clamming.  Her face has an expression of sheer frustration as she stomps around, glaring at the clam holes.  If her body language was talking she would have been cursing the clams, shouting “I want to eat another fish, not a damn clam!” 

Then she turns, looks at John and I, and starts stomping our way.  We are slightly concerned that she might decide to take her frustration out on us (how human is that?).   (Timothy Treadwell had described being charged by bears after they had been intimidated and driven off by more dominant bears.  Timothy had a sense that they were taking out their frustrations on him).  I sat up onto my knees, stared at Dots, and said in a firm voice, “its ok, Dots”.  She kept walking our way, and then I said more firmly, “Dots” as she continued to approach with her head hunkered down (a possible signal of aggression).  At this point, John got up onto his knees and looked at her assertively, and Dots immediately veered to her left and jogged off.  A minute later, she resumed clamming, appearing calm, collected and “over it”. 

            Biologists, and the scientific community at large, are adamantly opposed to granting animals the capacity to have emotions.  Observations of emotions are usually denied or denigrated as the anthropomorphizing of animals – the biased assignment of fictitious human emotions to animals.  But I can say, in full awareness that Dots is not a human, nor does she perceive the world as a human, that Dots exhibited what can only be interpreted as an expression of utter frustration.  And frustration is clearly an emotion.

I don’t believe it’s biased to point out that she expressed her frustration in very human terms – lashing out physically, stomping off, and punching the water.  Haven’t we all seen a frustrated man get to the end of his rope and punch a wall?  Noticing Dots’ emotions shows us how similar we really are to animals.  It breaks down those staunchly defended walls that keep us humans separated from the natural world, and separated from the intelligent, and complex emotional lives of animals.  By acknowledging emotions in animals we can begin to more fully understand and appreciate them.

It always amazes me that scientists see emotions in animals as a false bias, and not as a bridge of connectedness between species.  However these same scientists (Darwin being one of the worst) have no trouble ubiquitously projecting their sexist biases onto animals– for example describing animal behavior in scientific literature with biased terms such as “prostitution”, “rape”, “promiscuity”, and “coquettishness” and referring to female animals as the “property” of males of the species.  It boggles my mind that describing a female humming bird as a prostitute is “science” while showing that a bear has feelings is seen as fiction.  For more on the anthropomorphism of animals click here.

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