With summer tourist activity hitting full pitch in Yellowstone National Park, and other black bears engaged in mating-season courtship, one bear apparently decided he’d just had enough and passed out for hours by the roadside near Tower Junction.
The bear sprawled on his back with his tongue hanging out and snoozed away the hot afternoon seemingly without a care in the world, blissfully ignoring traffic roaring by barely 30 yards away.
The bear zonked out so hard, some people worried that it was dead, park visitor and wildlife photographer Corey Pettis told Cowboy State Daily.
But the bear would occasionally stir, raise his head to look drowsily around before going back to sleep, said Pettis, who spent a couple of hours watching that bear and several others on May 28.
“It was a hot day. I think the temperature was up in the 80s,” which might explain why the bear was wise to find a shady spot and get some rest, even as other bears amorously chased each other around, he said.
Black Bear Hangout
Grizzly bear activity has been getting plenty of attention in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks this spring.
Around Tower Junction, it’s all about black bears, said Pettis, who lives in Wisconsin and has been visiting Yellowstone and Grand Teton every spring and fall for years.
“Over by Tower Falls is where the black bears all hang out. I’ve hardly ever seen a grizzly go through there,” he said.
Pettis said he saw nine black bears in the general area on May 28, including three others in the vicinity of the sleepy bear.
Those bears included at least one female that was being actively pursued by males trying to mate with her.
“Maybe he (the sleeping bear) had been out chasing that female earlier and was just tired,” he said.
Going Unnoticed
Pettis said that the snoozing bear was one of the most amusing things he’s ever seen in the national parks.
Equally amusing is how unnoticed the bear was by many tourists.
“There were hundreds of people stopping and looking around,” attracted by the sight of the black bears that were up and moving, he said.
“But that sleeping bear was down so flat on the ground, many people didn’t even notice he was there,” he added.
That’s just as well, because nobody tried to push in too close and disrupt the bear’s slumber, he said.
“He was sleeping hard. I could just about picture the drool coming out of his mouth,” Pettis said.
More Tolerant Of People
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of the Grizzly Bear Foundation in British Columbia, Canada, told Cowboy State Daily that he wasn’t particularly surprised to hear about a black bear sleeping soundly near so many people.
Generally speaking, black bears are “much more comfortable being closer to human settlements than grizzlies are,” he said.
Black bears evolved in heavily forested habitats and usually don’t need as much vast, undisturbed territory as grizzlies do, he said.
“Grizzlies need bigger habitats,” he said. "They need isolated alpine areas to den in."
So-called “roadside” grizzlies in Yellowstone and Grand Teton are mostly females with cubs, Scapillati said.
That’s because male grizzlies will sometimes kill a female’s cubs in hopes that the female will go back into heat so the male can mate with her.
Large male grizzlies tend to be less tolerant of crowds, and so the roadside grizzly mammas have learned to take their cubs near roadsides to lower risks, he said.
Bear Personalities
While black bears might be more apt to get comfortable around crowds, grizzlies can get used to specific humans in the backcountry, Scapillati said.
He’s watched female grizzlies nursing their cubs in the wild, something those bears might not have been comfortable doing near crowds.
People also frequently underestimate how intelligent black bears and grizzlies are, Scapillati said.
They’re smart and complex enough to develop a wide range of personalities, he said.
It makes sense that the black bear Pettis watched snoozing near Tower Junction may have an unusually mellow personality, Scapillati said.
And in the parks, it might be possible for grizzlies to develop that level of comfort with crowds of tourists, he added.
“It’s probably a matter of time before somebody films a grizzly bear doing that (zonking out by the roadside),” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
