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Dr. Jon Beckmann, WCS If a layperson like you or me were to see a bear in the wild, the majority of us would respond a little like this: be amazed at its beauty, start to freak out a little at its size and get the heck out of Dodge (especially if it was a cub, because mama bears are known for protecting their young). But that's not how Dr. Jon Beckmann sees it. His day job is actually tracking bears. And he gets all up in their business for a good reason -- research. As part of an ongoing 13-year study on bear behavior in Nevada by The Wildlife Conservation Society (WLS), Beckmann, along with other field scientists, recently helped microchip three bear cubs who were in a den with their ...

fPat, Flickr To humans, a growl is a growl. But to dogs, all growls are not created equal, it seems. Those growling sounds contain a wealth of important information to other canines, according to new research described in Discovery News. For a recent study, Peter Pongracz, a behavioral biologist at Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary, recorded growls from 20 pet dogs in three different scenarios: watching a threatening stranger approach, playing tug-of-war with their owners and facing off with another dog for a bone. Then he played the recordings to other dogs as they chewed on meaty calf bones (yum!). The dogs that heard tapes of the bone-guarding dogs backed away from their snacks in ...