Sacramento Zoo Curator: Bears are smart animals | Animal Lovers

SACRAMENTO, CA - The term smarter than your average bear doesn't actually give the animals a lot of credit.

A curator at the Sacramento Zoo said bears are actually really smart animals.

A closer look at the viral video taken by a Lake Tahoe woman captures the quandry a bear cub got into and how the mama bear helped her babe escape.

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"They are puzzle-solvers in nature. They have an intense ability to figure things out. In this case, the mom is pretty dead-set  in getting access to the cub. It gives us a taste of how adaptable and how intellligent these animals are," Sacramento Zoo Harrison Adell said. "We always thing of parrots and primates as being among the smartest animals. Dolphins, of course, are up there. Bears are up there as well. They have to puzzle-solve and surive in the environment."

By Suzanne Phan, sphan@news10.net