Welcome to the fifth episode of YJBM Science News, where we discuss the recent news in healthcare and science across the Yale community. Today, our hosts Mara and Samantha discuss three of the most intriguing topics of the past week. Instead of a regular collection of several stories, this week we will cover two intriguing research papers in neurobiology.
Bears, like other carnivores, are typically cast as unthinking, emotionless killers. But the late naturalist Charlie Russell believed this tragic misperception hides the truth about who bears really are. Charlie’s life story changed how humans perceive grizzly bears. While other scientists and naturalists were studying bears from a distance, tranquilizing them and tagging them with trackers, Charlie chose to live, intimately and without harm, among bears for decades in far east Russia and in North America. His objectives were as different as his methods. “Biologists know a lot—how many calories a bear needs every day, their numbers, and so on. This is good information, but it doesn’t really tell you anything about who a bear is,” he told our guest. “I’ve never wanted to know about bears, I’ve only wanted to understand them.” In her much anticipated new book, “Talking with Bears” (Rocky Mountain Books, fall 2019), Dr. Gay Bradshaw tells Russell’s story, built on a decade of conversations about and two lifetimes devoted to searching for the truth of who animals really are. An internationally renowned expert on animal trauma and a Pulitzer Prize-nominated author, Dr. Bradshaw has spent her life exploring the minds, emotions and lives of animals, and pushing and inspiring science and society to better understand them.