A wildlife camera set up by Alberta Parks in Canada captured some comical scenes of bears playing and assorted wildlife gathering at a single tree in a wooded area. It appears they were all smelling the various scents left on it and encountering one another by smells.
One might imagine these animals would want to stay away from each other, in order to prevent potential clashes, but the video shows just the opposite to be true. The video winds up being better than Disney, because it is real wild animals, rather than trained ones made to perform for the camera and a commercial media project. This kind of video shows that nature does have much more to offer than canned experiences, like one experiences at zoos and aquatic parks featuring dolphin shows. Unfortunately, these commercial experiences seem to have created an expectation that animals exist to entertain us. Consequently, we may not observe nature closely and therefore leave most of it unappreciated.
For example, grizzly bears are named with a word that sounds like grisly, which means gruesome or terrifying and much reportage on this species of wild animal focuses on the extremely rare event that one attacks a human. However, moments like the ones we see in the video depict bears playing and enjoying themselves in a very non-violent manner. Also, most grizzly bears never attack people.
In other words, these large animals spend the vast majority of their time not being violent,and it appears that they actually may enjoy having fun at times, just like humans. It also appears that the markings and scents left on the tree are not only a way of communicating territory to members of the same species, but that other species like the mountain lions and ungulates are also reading the information on the tree to some degree.
Or, one could simply see it as an enjoyable window on the lives of wild animals.
