Timothy Treadwell in “Grizzly Man”

This essay will discuss Statement 1 as given: "Treadwell was, I think, meaning well…Those bears are big and ferocious and they come equipped to kill you and eat you . . . He got what he deserved, in my opinion.” I am in agreement with this opinion. Treadwell acted foolishly, and the only surprising aspect of the result was that it took so long to happen.

Grizzly bears in their native habitat are wild animals. The different species of bears (grizzlies, brown, and other varieties) found in Alaska are among the largest on earth. Grizzly-human interaction is best done minimally, if at all: the only reason that bears do not react as quickly as they might to humans (considering them prey) is that in their habitats, they have access to plenty of food and they do not consider humans a territorial threat, so the usual reaction of a bear to a human in the wild is mild curiosity, then indifference. This general lack of reaction to his presence lulled Treadwell into thinking that the bears were tolerating it, and then to the ultimately fatal assumption that they were mutual friends. Jans, in his examination of Treadwell, the title of which includes his “obsession”, notes that Treadwell was a “self-admitted addictive personality” (15). This somewhat obviates the argument that Treadwell was not quite right in the head and therefore, he was not to blame for the deaths of himself and his girlfriend; if Treadwell was self-aware enough to make that admission, then at some level, he knew that his bear-human “bond” was nothing but a fantasy and that he was placing himself and his girlfriend in continual grave danger. Therefore, he did indeed “get what he deserved.” The truly sad part is that his girlfriend died as well; she may have been charmed by Treadwell into the same fatal miscalculations that he made, but she couldn’t have known Treadwell as well as Treadwell himself did.

The error of anthropomorphism is at the heart of many of our relations with animals. We tend to see them in human terms, even to the extent of ascribing human motives to them. An obvious example of this is mistaking such actions as a cat’s purr or a dog’s licking his master’s face as showing human-like affection. In terms of the grizzly bear, its behavior is complex, but should never be mistaken as mimicking human behavior. Craighead, Sumner, and Mitchell note that in Yellowstone National Park, a prime laboratory for studying human-grizzly interactions, the relationship has been uneasy at best. They note that bears have a concept of “personal space” and that “a seemingly placid animal (male or female) can become awesomely aggressive and attack instantaneously” (Craighead et al. 149-150). Treadwell, as many Yellowstone visitors do, made the mistake that just because the bears were tolerating his presence at one time meant that they had made up their minds about him and would leave him alone. This was an error of anthropomorphism, as the bears were clearly not perceiving him the way another human would, i.e., as friend or foe; their lack of reaction to him didn’t mean that they saw him as a friend. This was a fairly stupid assumption for Treadwell to have made, particularly given his professed knowledge of and fascination with the bears.

Therefore, I am in agreement with the statement that Treadwell did not treat the bear-human relationship appropriately, i.e., by acknowledging that they were wild, unpredictable, and dangerous animals. He did indeed act as if the bears were “people wearing bear costumes,” as Sam Egli put it. It may have been fascinating and even spiritually uplifting for Treadwell to venture so close to the bears, but he did deserve the consequences he suffered. People who are sufficiently aware of their own obsessive behavior should take steps to modify it.

Works Cited

Craighead, John J., et al. The Grizzly Bears of Yellowstone. Island Press, 1995.

Jans, Nick. “The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears.” Penguin, 2006, Penguin. com.