Nature

Bears are not stupid; they’re opportunists, and Sajecki marvels at their intelligence. Once, as a grad student in California, she found a cub in a culvert trap, screaming bloody murder. Seeing the sow nearby, she let the cub out. “The mother just sort of huffed at me,” she says. “Every morning, that cub was in the trap. Seven nights—it was safe, it got a pretty good meal, and she could go off and do what she needed to do. I feel like she kind of took advantage of the situation. I called it the Steel Baby Sitter.”

Editor's note: Since press time, we've run across the wonderful den cam at the North American Bear Center (Bear.org): An infrared video camera has been trained on Lily, a 3-year-old American black bear, and captured her giving birth to a cub on January 22. Find Lily on Facebook as well.