Posted by Ranger Sally (165.83.4.127) on April 12, 2002 at 17:27:47:
In Reply to: senses posted by margie on April 12, 2002 at 15:48:23:
: How do a bears senses (sight, smell, hearing) compare to 1) humans, and 2) wolves
Thanks for your question, Margie. A bear's sense of sight is possibly equal to human vision. Wolves also have reasonably good eyesight, though it is not their best sense. A bear's sense of hearing in general is fair to moderately good and more sensitive than a human's. Shepard and Sanders write that at 300 meters a bear can detect human conversation and repond to the click of a camera shutter or a gun being cocked at 50 meters. Wolves also have amazing hearing and can can detect the movement of small animals under layers of snow. I'm afraid that I don't have the numbers to compare wolves with bears. Smell is the most important sense that both wolves and bears have. No animals has more acuteness of smell than a bear-and that's saying something, since some researchers estimate that a wolf's sense of smell is as much as a million times better than a human's!