As his name suggests, Long Legs was distinguished by his lengthy limbs.  He was easy to spot out on the flats, and while fishing, by his height.  He had a very dark brown coat that looked almost black when wet.  I also thought that his ears looked small for his head.  He looked incredibly tall, but part of that was because he wasn’t done growing, and hadn’t filled out with the massive amount of fat of a full grown male in his prime.  I can only imagine how massive he will look once he puts on more weight since he is such a tall bear.  One day while we watched the bears fishing we observed Racer repeatedly charging Long Legs, who was at least twice his size.  Brad told us later that he believed that Long Legs was Paula’s grown son, and therefore Racer’s half sibling.  He thought that was probably why Racer took such liberties with Long Legs.  I also observed him frequently fishing alone upstream in the river, further away from where the largest concentration of bears fished.  The water was deeper in this area, but Long Legs seemed to have quite a lot of success procuring fish in this area.  Perhaps his height made it easier for him to run efficiently through deeper water. 

Thinking about Long Legs’ physique, and how that could contribute to his individuality – his individual fishing habits and preferences, I was struck with the fact that the scientific model for studying animals will always exclude any individuality on the part of an animal.  In fact being an individual is antithetical to the scientific model – which must only look at things as “trends”.  But what being an individual means is you don’t fit into a trend, you are unique, you are special, you do things differently.  Yet when behaviors, or physical traits, or actions can’t be lumped into a scientific trend, they appear to not exist at all.  When in fact, if you looked at animals in a different way, you would see clearly that animals are individuals.  In the case of Long Legs, we have an individual whose elongated physique has made him a deep water fisherman. 

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