*Silly polar bears! Hey! Share some with your sister!Barry Lopez's chapter entitled, Tornarssuk, in his book Arctic Dreams, examines the relationship humans have had with the polar bear. In continuing to look at how and why we create connections with animals, this chapter helped define the many types of relationships that can exist among one species - humans - and one animal.
Through Lopez's writings, I understand the beauty that exists in the polar bear, in its physicality and the intricacies in its behavior and relationships. I am grateful that Lopez can provide a wealth of information on this species of bear. For people like myself who enjoy reading nature essays and learning about animal behavior and relationships, writers such as Lopez show us the true beauty of the subject - not just the symbolic appeal of a polar bear's life, whether it be the bear's ferocity or the mother/cub relationship, but the scientific answers to how a polar bear's blubber and fur create warmth, the mother's urge to balance hunting with taking care of her cubs, the Eskimos relationships with polar bears and the history of European's interactions and treatment of polar bears.
After reading just one chapter in a book, I feel as though I am invading the privacy of these bears. Is it fair that I am able to know so much about their lives, yet I will never meet one of them? Learning about the intimate behavior of the everyday life of a polar bear is what creates in me an appreciation, respect, and love for this animal. Although, I then consider the research that might have been done in order for this knowledge to be written down in a book for me to read. I take in this knowledge selfishly, disregarding the bears that were drugged, tagged, darted, made vulnerable, and even killed in order for me to obtain this knowledge. This does not pertain to everything Lopez tells; very much of what he tells of the polar bear is from observation, true accounts from Eskimos, and general history. More than once in this chapter, Lopez notes the ambivalence that scientists have felt when capturing these bears for research. The measures taken are insensitive and sometimes cruel. At the end of the chapter, Lopez writes:
"One of the females we darted went down near a jumble of shattered ice. While the others made measurements, I looked at her feet. I had once been told that polar bear claws show an annual shading, faint rings, which could be used reliably to age a bear, as is the case with ringed seals. But there were none that I could detect. I looked at the details of her fur and felt the thickness of her ears, as though examining a museum specimen. Uncomfortable with all this, I walked over to the pressure ridge and sat on a slab of broken sea ice. It was a beautiful day, the skies clear behind a thin layer of very high cirrus, which made the sky a paler blue. About five below zero. No wind. As I sat there my companions rolled the unconscious bear over on her back and I saw a trace of pink in the white fur between her legs. The lips of her vulva were swollen. Her genitalia were in size and shape like a woman's. I looked away. I felt I had invaded her privacy. For the remainder of the day I could not rid myself of this image of vulnerability." (118)
It is heartbreaking that biologists, scientists, and researchers who love wildlife and got into the field because they love wildlife, must conduct their research in this way. It is so insensitive and disrespectful to treat animals as though they do not have a life outside of the being the symbols we have created. Is the polar bear just a big white bear who lives in the arctic - or at the zoo - that's where I've seen them, drinking coca-cola?! Is that all they are?
Lopez writes of only two or three examples in which the knowledge was gained through hands-on research where the bear was tagged, darted, or drugged. When Lopez writes of the polar bear's walk, its habits, its relationships, and its similarities to the Eskimo, we are able to learn so much more about this bear. We truly learn about the polar bear through writings of observation and from stories of the Eskimos whom have lived among the polar bear, non-intrusively and without speculation.
It is the writings of long-term observation that fill me with a love and respect of wildlife and nature. I wish I had more knowledge on bear biology. I'm not sure why it is a necessity for humans to understand bear biology. I wonder if it is only fulfilling a curiosity. When scientists dart and drug animals it only inspires us to want to know more. To invade these animals even further. The ambivalence that scientists have, as Lopez mentioned both in Tornarssuk and A Presentation of Whales, shows the disconnection that is happening. Does poking, prodding, drugging, and treating the animal as scientific reseach really show compassion and respect towards these animals?
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