Bart the Bear Was Born in Baltimore

Yes, Bart the Bear — made famous in the Grizzly Adams TV series and over 15 movies and 15 documentaries — was an Alaskan Brown Bear born at the Baltimore Zoo in 1977.

Bart was the product of an unplanned pregnancy and the zoo allegedly lacked the facilities to care for the cub, and so it was sold at 5 pounds and 5 weeks old to Hollywood animal trainers Doug and Lynne Seus.

Why do I say “allegedly”?

Well, the story of zoo births and money is not a particularly attractive tale. As I noted back in 2009:

“Canned big game shoots of exotic animals are a natural outgrowth of the public's fascination with ‘zoo babies’.

“Zoos routinely over-breed animals because tiger cubs and baby zebras boost attendance and generate profits. Cute baby animals quickly grow up, however, and that's a problem. It turns out that the world has more caged lions, tigers and zebras than it knows what to do with.

“What to do? Answer: canned shooting preserves in Texas. It's not an accident that at one point nine board members of the San Antonio Zoo owned hunt preserves.

“Not all exotic animals used in canned hunts come from large zoos. Many come from small zoos and private breeders of large exotic animals. If you have a checkbook in this country, you can buy anything from a lion to a bear, and from a bobcat to a gemsbok.

“And if you have ever bought a wildife magazine with amazing shots of baby cougars, lynx, red fox, black bear and wolf, you are a small part of the problem. Most of those pictures were taken in private ‘photography zoos,’ and at least some of those baby animals were later sold, as adults, to canned hunts.

“An example is as current as this morning's headlines:

"’Country music star Troy Lee Gentry (one half of popular duo Montgomery Gentry) is facing charges for shooting a tame, captive bear and then trying to mask the killing as a proper hunt.... Indictment documents made public this week showed that Gentry paid $4,650 U.S. to kill a 'trophy-caliber' bear named Cubby. The incident took place two years ago at the Minnesota Wildlife Connection, a company that claims to offer photographers a chance to capture wild animals on film. ... Gentry killed the bear using a bow and arrow while the animal was in its pen.’”

So what were the real circumstances surrounding Bart’s birth?  I have no idea, but an “unplanned pregnancy” of a Kodiak Bear who is quickly sold strikes me as slightly suspicious.

That said, Bart had a glorious, well-loved, and long life, and he did wonders for bear conservation.

But was it an accident that Bart was sold just as he first opened his eyes?

No, of course not. That’s exactly when you snatch a wild animal away from its mother if you are looking to shape the animal by leveraging Limbic Imprinting.

Short Skirt, Long Jacket, Emma Peale Edition

A Song of My People

I was born a Cesarean section in what was then Salisbury, Rhodesia and is now Harare, Zimbabwe. 

Due to the circumstances of my birth, my father gave me "Corrigan" as a middle name in honor of "Wrong Way Corrigan,” the fellow who flipped off the FAA to fly solo, and without permission, from Brooklyn to Ireland in 1938. 

More people attended Douglas Corrigan’s Broadway ticker-tape parade than honored Lindbergh after his 1927 triumph. 

I like the Corrigan-name zinger quite a lot, as my life has had both a theme and a plot right from the beginning.

Well, imagine my delight to find this song by the Corrigan Brothers this evening.  

Apparently it’s very popular song in Ireland (especially this week!) as are both Barrack Obama and Joe Biden.

Imagine!

Oddly, my mother grew up 6 and a half blocks from Madelyn Lee Payne, Barack Obama's grandmother, in the little town of Augusta, Kansas. 

It was Madelyn Lee Payne who raised Barack from the age of 10 onward.

The 1935 census says my Grandfather, Robert E. Dunlop, was the "still man" at the local refinery in Augusta, and he was making $496 a month. 

Rolla Payne, Madelyn Payne's father, is listed as a "bookkeeper for an oil company" --  no doubt the same refinery as the one where my grandfather worked. 

Augusta, Kansas was an oil company refinery town.  The Payne's lived only six and half blocks from my mother and my grandparents. 

Like my grandparents, the Paynes were Methodists.  Being devout, they no doubt attended the only Methodist church in town along with my grandmother (my grandfather was not much for church attendance).

My mother died four years ago, in the Washington, D.C. house she’d lived in with my father for 49 years.  

Oddly, her house was just 6 and a half blocks away from Barrack Obama’s. ❤️

Two Local Longhorns

L

 

They were tucked into each other to avoid flies, and the one never turned towards me. Huge animals, but apparently quite calm and docile. These are “front of the farm” cows and are more or less pets.

The Color Palette of Robots

The world is ruled by opportunistic social pack predators.  

I mention this because I am seeing a lot of apparently unrelated things that may suggest a pattern leading to — what?  

I don’t know.  

That said, I can see a picture forming, and it’s not an AI-created picture, even if it’s a painting of the immediate future of Artificial Intelligence.

The first color on the palette is that Anthropic and OpenAI seem to be delaying their IPO, or Initial Public Offering.

The background here is that AI companies burn through cash like runaway trains burning through coal bunkers.  

Revenue cannot keep up. 

That’s normal for a startup business or industry, but the rate and scale of the AI cash-burn is truly unprecedented, and the price to earnings ratios in these new tech industries often makes no sense.

What seems incontestable is that OpenAI and Anthropic **need** an IPO to raise cash, but only if the IPO valuation is very high. 

Will it be? 

Who knows, but the SpaceX IPO proved wildly volatile, losing as much as 50 percent of its highest valuation at one point. 

SpaceX owns xAI, so to some (muddy) extent, the first AI IPO has already occurred.

But the SpaceX IPO was a muddy thing on several levels. 

Anthropic and OpenAI promise a cleaner presentation and valuation, at least in theory.

Anthropic wants to IPO before OpenAI, but they seem to be edging back. Are they confidant of their proposed valuation?  If so, why?  If not, why not?

OpenAI and Anthropic **need** an IPO to raise cash, but they may also **fear** it as well.  

That’s the itch.  

How to scratch it?

One way may be to create an alternative reason to **delay** an IPO without triggering a financing panic.

To do that, they need a non-finance reason to SLOW everything down.

Which brings me to the second color on the palette; the current firestorm of Doomsday predictions about AI.  

These seem a little too “manufactured all at once” for me.  

Could there be another agenda — a look for a reason to slow growth and delay what might be a problematic IPO for either Anthropic or OpenAI?

I don’t know, but it’s not outside the bounds of logic is it?

Pair that with the massive groundswell of local opposition, at a national level, to data centers, and the government’s sudden shut down of two Anthropic modules, and the risk of regulatory capture enters the arena.  

It’s a pair of potentially big monsters.  Those are the third colors on the palette.

Which brings me to the fourth color on the palette, the nascent suggestion that government may need to be a major owner of AI.

This is a trial balloon being floated from both the right and the left, and by both the technologically illiterate and the very top of the AI pyramids.

One rationale for the government to be a very large stock-owner of AI companies is that putative future “profits” could be used to defray the cost of supporting scores of millions of now unemployed (thanks to AI) workers.

What’s unclear is whether the push here is for benevolent communism (ie the government seizing and nationalizing the means of production in order to fund a social-welfare state) or something else — a massive economic bailout with government buying several hundred billion dollars of AI stock to prevent an AI melt-down. 

So those are the fours colors I see on the palette.  The CYMK of it all.

But what’s being painted?  

I have no idea.  I do know, however, that it’s human hands that are painting it.

Finding Use for the Dead

 Three loads of cut-to-size fire wood, free to my neighbor.  Two of oak, and also this one of now (mostly) dry pine.

Born Free and Limbic Imprinting

How many of us saw the movie “Born Free” in a movie theater?  If you did, you’re past 60!

Born Free is the story of Elsa the lioness and her two siblings, who were orphaned at a few days old and scooped out of the Kenyan wild by George and Joy Adamson in 1956.

The book is the book, and the movie is the movie, but suffice it to say that what was going in here was already long understood by wild animal trainers, even if it was not named and was novel to the general public.

See “Nature or Nurture” >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2026/09/nature-or-nurture.html?

Limbic Imprinting With Siefried & Roy

These tiger cubs are just days old, their eyes not yet completely working, but they have already been permanently removed from their mothers. 

These cubs will be bottle-fed by hand for the next three months and bottle treats will be used repeatedly as young adults — part of the Limbic Imprinting protocol used by Siegfried & Roy and many other large animal trainers.

Limbic Imprinting is the third type of imprinting — the one beyond the Filial Imprinting described by Konrad Lorenz, or the Sexual Imprinting that determines what or who animals see as potential mates.  

Limbic Imprinting effects the still-forming chemistry of the amygdala in the neo-natal brain of mammals, and it impacts emotion and the body's fight-or-flight response.  

One reason adult wild animals are so anxious around humans is that their Limbic system is wired to trigger fight-or-flight.  

One reason wild animal trainers are so focused on getting their future charges as neonatal dependents, preferably only a few days old, is that successful Limbic Imprinting at this very early age seems to permanently rewire the fight-or-flight response.

In the case of Siegfried & Roy and their big cats, everything was all fine until it wasn’t.  

Wild animals can be reliably tamed if taken at a very early age and “love bombed” with treats and training, but some instincts are baked in, which means they will always present regardless of training (see “The Misbehavior of Organisms” by Keller and Marian Breland, 1961).  

Mostly these instinctive behaviors are marking, vocalization, foraging, or bedding behaviors, but prey drive (especially chasing) is certainly one, and all animals have the ability to get angry, defensive, or irritated. 

In the case of Siegfried & Roy, it’s not clear what happened, but the end result was Roy Horn was mauled by the neck and his spine broken, resulting in an end to the highest paid act on Las Vegas’s Sunset Strip.

Or, to quote Chris Rock about the limits and realities of wild animal training, “That tiger went tiger!”

The Hyena Men of Nigeria

Yesterday, in a post entitled “Nature or Nurture,” I explained Limbic Imprinting, and why the capture of wild animals very soon after they are born is key to much successful taming.

Here, we see how an extended family group in Nigeria has turned the capturing and display of infant Hyenas and Baboons (often after killing their parents) into their family business.

You may not realize it, but you have seen the exact same thing in the more elaborate acts of Siegfried and Roy and other wild animal entertainers.  

The practice of snatching very young babies in order to forge Limbic Imprinting has been repeated again and again for millennia, from wolves, lions, and bears, to deer,  chimpanzees, and elephants.

Put the Champagne On Ice

This is Donald Trump falling asleep at yesterday’s 9-11 ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

He was dead asleep with pronounced facial asymmetry and odd facial movements. There’s lots of video and 100s of shots.  This public sleeping on stage — and manic late night angry tweeting of confused babble — has been going on for months.

This is classic Alzheimers behavior paired with incipient signs of a stroke.  

Facial asymmetry that happens very fast, within seconds to minutes, where one side of the face droops, the smile looks uneven, and the person cannot control one side of their mouth, are classic stroke signs of a stroke, as is loss of balance, arm weakness, slurred speech, confusion, and outbursts of anger.

Trump is now in the Devil’s Waiting Room, and I do not think the queue is long.

The Fence

Habitat without wildlife is scenery.

Wildlife without habitat is a zoo.

Today’s Yard Work Supervisor

Nature or Nurture?

Domesticated or wild? Tame or feral?

It’s not quite that simple is it?

Yes, if you are painting broadly, wolves as a group are “wild,” and one on a leash can be described as “tame”.

Conversely, dogs as a group are “domesticated,” but an adult dog that was born in a dump far from humans, eats roadkill, and has never seen the inside of a building or worn a collar on its neck can be described as “feral”.

But things fall apart and come together if we look a bit closer.

Take a truly feral adult dog or cat.  

Can they be rehabilitated?  

It depends on the animal, but it’s *always* difficult, as truly feral adult cats and dogs are as fearful of people as a naturally wild animal. 

Why is that?  

Well, it seems the process of “going feral” in dogs and cats fundamentally changes how their brain and central nervous systems deal with novelty.

Anxiety is almost always on the front burner.  

These genetically “domesticated” dogs and cats have been effectively “wired for wild”.

Where and when does this wiring occur?

It occurs in the Limbic System of the brain, and it occurs in the first few days and weeks after birth.

What’s the Limbic System?

The Limbic System is the part of an individual animal’s brain that controls “flight or fight,” emotion, fear, and mood.

An individual animal’s Limbic System is wired and rewired starting at birth and over the next few weeks.

Changes in the Limbic System are, as far as we can tell, one-way events. 

What’s that mean?  It means that if a domesticated animal, such as a dog or cat, is born and raised to adulthood without human contact, it’s always going to be wild, and its “flight or fight” button will govern a great deal of its life.

Conversely, if a wild animal, such as a wolf or big cat, is born and raised to adulthood with lots of positive human contact, its “flight or fight” button will be attenuated due to changes made to the Limbic System shortly after birth

What about domesticated dogs that are born with genetic fear?  

There’s a topic that too often gets little attention!

Dogs born with genetic fear may have been well-cared for through their first 12 weeks of life, but they remain anxious and hand-shy nonetheless.  These animals are, in the words of Lady Gaga “born that way”.  

Can they be “fixed”?  

Not easily.  

A dog with genetic fear is a dog with a broken Limbic System. People are free to do what they want, but in my opinion a dog with genetic fear needs to be put down as humanely as possible, as the defect is in the brain, and makes them maladaptive as a pet.

Now, let’s flip it around and look at it the other way.   What about wild animals that are captured when only a few days old?

Here things go in the opposite direction.  Several things are happening in this situation,  especially with animals whose eyes are not yet open.

Imprinting, socialization, and rewards-based training all work together in this scenario to “tame” the natural fear of humans that pervades most wild animals.

This is Limbic Imprinting.

Limbic Imprinting begins with Filial Imprinting, in which baby animals naturally follow the first moving thing they see.  When that instinctive behavior is rewarded with food, warmth. and positive contact, the imprinting that occurs is likely permanent, and certainly difficult to change. 

Why is it so hard to change?  

That’s because an animal’s neonatal experience wires, or rewires, the  brain’s Limbic System (aka, the paleo-mammalian cortex) which is involved in emotional processing and motivation in vertebrate animals. 

Limbic Imprinting is a physical thing, and it’s key to understanding why the “taming” of wild animals captured when only a few hours or days old, is so often successful. 

Limbic Imprinting also explains why adult feral versions of “domesticated” animals are so difficult to work with despite descending from thousands of years of domestic stock.

Can “wild” animals taken at birth be tamed to the point of being far safer and more tractable than adult “domesticated” animals allowed to go fully feral?

Absolutely. We can see that in every country, every culture, in every era, and with damn near every animal, from elephants to lions, from chimpanzees to cheetahs, from horses to buffalo, from camels to red fox, and from badger to wolves. 

Some wild animals seem to tame rather easily, such as camels, horses, water buffalos, yaks, ducks, geese, hamsters, pigs, wild cats, and junglefowl.

These same animals, of course, have no trouble going feral.

Are they domesticated animals going feral, or wild animals made tame?

Does it matter?  

It’s really a tautological word game isn’t it?  Six of one and half a dozen of the other, as the old saying goes.

To be clear, imprinting and training *alone* will not make a wolf a bird dog or a good family pet.  

Even if a “wild” animal is always friendly and safe, there will be other issues that remain; size, urine marking, denning behavior, food caching, and the like. And, in the case of coyotes, foxes, and wolves, their body movements and play behavior may not be dog-like.

But can a wolf stolen from the den at two days old be turned into an animal that is safer than a three year old poorly socialized and truly feral 120-pound dog?

Absolutely.

And so now we get down to it: “domesticated” does not mean much,

Despite being domesticated for over 15,000 years, pet dogs routinely kill sheep and goats, kill other dogs, and maul and kill people.

And what about cattle and horses?  They’ve been domesticated for millennia, but woe be the fool that crosses the wire into a bull pasture.  

If you go to Pamplona and find yourself running with four feet of horn and two thousand pounds of muscle bearing down on you, be sure to yell backwards, “But you’re domesticated!”  I’m sure that will work wonders.

By the way, a truly feral dog is NOT the same as a stray or a village dog.  Strays and village dogs generally have had quite a lot of experience with humans, early on, and these animals see people as potential sources for food handouts.  A truly feral dog does not.

——————

RELATED POSTS:

▪️Konrad Lorenz Did Not Discover Imprinting >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2025/11/konrad-lorenz-did-not-discover.html?

▪️The Wolf In the Dog House >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2012/01/distinctions-without-difference.html?

▪️The Stolen Wolves of Kazakhstan >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-stolen-wolves-of-kazakhstan.html?

▪️ Who Domesticated Whom? And Why? >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2011/09/who-domesticated-whom-and-why.html?

▪️ The Wolves of Tbilisi Street >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-wolves-of-tbilisi-street.html?

I Did It Again

What?  I bought a bunch of plants (36) sight unseen from a garden-landscaping place going out of business.

I did this once before, two years ago, acquiring 48 potted bushes. 

Jumping into the dark back then, I came away thinking I’d actually gotten a good deal.

It’s the same on-line auction house this time, and the two most notable purchases are 20 winter-hardy ferns (unknown species) and 4 Mountain Fire Pieris, both of which are destined for the dappled shade under my 90 foot oaks in the backyard.

The other 12 plants are bee-feeder plants of various types — a sop to the residents of my five bee hives. 

With about 125 new day-lilies in the ground, and many, many Black-eyed Susans and Cat Mints split from an overcrowded bed back in June, the orchard area and side yard should be fun to see leaf- and flower-out next spring.  

This area already has about 400 daffodils planted two years ago under 8 apple trees, 3 peach trees, 2 cherry trees, 3 plum trees, 2 crab apple trees, and an Asian pear. The fruit trees are all doing well and getting too tall for deer to harm, and I hope to see more produce next year.

On the upside, I now have a working lawn tractor and cart (the mouse in the carb problem has been sorted), a good pile of screened dirt, and several piles of wood chip mulch to help the new plants along.  

But will I still have to dig 36 holes in rocky soil?  

Nope.  I’ll have to dig 61 holes.  I’ve still got about 20 Hay-scented Ferns to get into the ground, as well as five larger evergreen ferns in pots.

No rest for the weary, but no complaints either.

——-

The picture of the Mountain Fire Pieris is NOT what mine will *ever* look like.  I’m a realist.

As Always, Water the Good and Prune the Bad

Signs of Life and Death

These trunks, stood back up before removal, show the neat mortising work of a Pileated Woodpecker.  We have a lot of woodpeckers, owls, wood thrushes, and deer.