Black bears can recognise humans, food in photos: Study

Washington: American black bears may be able to recognise things they know in real life, such as food or humans, when looking at a photograph of the same item on a computer screen, a new study suggests.

The research forms part of a broader research project into the welfare of bears in captivity. It aims to find out how the animals themselves rate the environment in which they are held, and the facilities, food and features provided to them, researchers said.

For the study, researchers from Oakland University in the US first had to assess whether bears are in fact able to recognise two-dimensional (2-D) images of objects and people familiar to them when these are presented to them on a touch screen.

Researchers tested the responses of an American black bear named Migwan. The bear was born in the wild, but was rescued at a very young age and rehabilitated due to injuries.

She had previously received several months of training on an unrelated task using photographs of food items from her normal diet.

In this study, Migwan was first presented with two sets of objects new to her. Her ability to recognise these later, when presented with photographs including the items she had learned, was then assessed.

In a reverse task, she was also trained on the photographs of two different sets of objects and tested on the transfer to real objects.

It was found that Migwan was able to recognise, on a photograph, the visual features of objects or natural stimuli she already knew. It is an ability that bears share with hens, rhesus monkeys, pigeons, tortoises and horses.

"Bears can transfer learning with real objects to photographs of those objects presented on computer screens," said Zoe Johnson-Ulrich from Oakland University.

This means that photographs of items (food, objects, people or other bears) that are familiar to bears can be used to further test their discrimination ability.

Researchers believe that the findings have important implications for the use of photographs in computerised studies involving bears and in ultimately ensuring the welfare of captive bears.

"Because a lot of research with photographic stimuli uses familiar images, for example food or conspecifics, this is useful in suggesting that bears' responses to these photographs may reflect behaviours towards real items," said Jennifer Vonk from Oakland University.

The findings were published in the journal Animal Cognition.