Ever wonder how a grizzly bear picks berries?  The secret is in a bear’s lips – which you can see clearly in this picture.  Unlike a human’s lips, which border our teeth – bear’s lips are large and extend greatly away from their teeth.  Grizzly bear lips are highly dexterous, and can be used to grasp and manipulate objects – much like humans use their fingers and thumbs.  Humans tend to define an “opposable thumb” as a physical feature which distinguishes “higher” animals from “lower” ones because a thumb can lead to the use of tools, and manipulation of an animal’s environment.  However, bear anatomy shows that nature can come up with a completely different design for accomplishing a similar task – like grasping.  Grizzly bears use the dexterity in their lips for all sorts of food gathering tasks, such as efficiently and quickly gathering and eating berries, breaking apart pine cones to extract the fatty seeds inside, or scooping out the high-fat eggs from inside the ripped open belly of a fish.