Grizzly Man

After watching the Grizzly Man, a documentary following Treadwell and his life in the wild living with the grizzly bears, many controversies come up such as, but not limited to: was Treadwell crazy, was what he was doing harmful, helpful, or did it not affect the animals in any way?

For me, although Treadwell was getting us very good footage of these majestic animals in their natural habitat, I think he was interacting with them too much. When he is filming them and reaches out to touch them, or even swimming with them, I think this takes them out of their natural habitat, not location-wise, but interaction-wise. When do bears actually get touched by humans? Rarely ever unless they are captive. Because of his actions with (not just towards) the bears, they are experiencing something different than what would normally happen. This leads to a change in behavior of the bears that would not naturally happen. If Treadwell was just observing them from a far, that would be more acceptable for me because he wasn't altering any behaviors.

Although Treadwell says he was trying to get scientific information on how these bears live, I think he just wanted to prove to some people that he would be able to live with the bears - especially since he 'loved' them and would die for them. If we compare Treadwell to Goodall, we will see many differences in how they interacted, or didn't with the animals, ways of collecting information, whether it was just observing or altering behaviors, along with many other differences. In my opinion, Goodall was doing exactly what Treadwell was attempting to do, she just did it in a more scientific way, therefore making her seem less "crazy."

For me, Goodall was more successful because she did not "become" one of her subjects, where as Treadwell was adapting to the bears behavior and trying to mimic them (bathing, hitting on their nose, etc.). Because of this, I think we can say that he got too comfortable with the bears and was more a brother to them than an observer and the bears may have seen this transformation as well. His death, to the bears, could have been seen as killing Treadwell their brother bear, versus killing Treadwell a person who is observing them and has no relationship to them. If the bears did take this view, then it doesn't surprise me (no matter how cynical that sounds) that he was killed because bears have to fight with other bears for the food, etc.