The Canadian town of Churchill celebrates Halloween like nowhere else in the world. As night falls, a helicopter hovers overhead. Armed residents patrol the town in pickup trucks. Military reservists, ambulances and the fire brigade are also on the streets. They are all there to protect trick-or-treating children - from bears.

Churchill, on the shores of Hudson BayAn inland sea on the eastern coast of Canada, connected to the Atlantic Ocean. , is known as "the polar bear capital of the world". It was built on the migratory route they take to the bay when the waters freeze in the autumn, and several hundred go past it - or through it - each year.

The town has only 900 inhabitants, but their numbers are swollen by tourists who come to watch the migration. The bears, meanwhile, are spending more time on land as climate change makes the ice melt earlier in the year. This, and growing familiarity with humans, has made them an increasing threat - so much so that Churchill now has a polar-bear jail.

Bears which cannot be scared away by blank shots from guns are tranquillised and held in the jail for up to 30 days. They are then taken by helicopter to be released 90 miles away.

Last August, bears were seen roaming another Canadian town, Yellowknife, after its inhabitants had been evacuated to escape wildfires. And around the world, stories of bears encroachingIntruding on or slowly advancing towards. on human territory are becoming more frequent. In 2019, the village of Ryrkaypiy in northern Russia was invaded by more than 50 bears.

In 2022 they were photographed peering from the windows of an abandoned research station on the Russian island of Kolyuchin, while ConnecticutA state in the northeastern USA. recorded 67 cases of bears breaking into homes.

In India, a sloth bear and her cub were caught on CCTV as they clambered over the gate of a house in RajasthanA state in northwest India. Rajasthan means "The Land of Kings". . A man in Romania recently complained that a bear had drunk all his whisky.

Experts say that we should not be surprised by these incidents. Bears are considered to be among the most intelligent animals:¹ as clever as apes and monkeys and cleverer than dogs.

They possess the largest and most complicated brains, relative to their size, of any land mammal. They are extraordinarily clever at hiding from hunters, covering their tracks and using trees and rocks as camouflage.

They are also ingenious foragers, constantly finding new ways of getting at food. They have been known to open car doors and many different kinds of supposedly bear-proof containers.

They have sophisticated social relationships, never losing track of each other and sometimes helping other members of the community find food. Cubs spend up to three and a half years being educated by their mothers in where to find food over a wide area.

Yes: Bears carry a detailed map of their territory in their heads and can remember food sources for as long as 10 years. Meanwhile humans, stupefied by social media and TV, are getting less intelligent.

No: Biologists credit them with an IQA means of measuring human intelligence. A person's IQ is usually ascertained by making them sit a standardised test. Some have criticised these tests as a means of evaluating intelligence, claiming that they ignore much of what it means to be intelligent. equivalent to that of the great apes, but in human terms that only makes them as clever as a three-year-old child. Their jailbreak record is poor compared to humans'.

Or... Even if they are not cleverer than us, we can learn a great deal from them. They show tremendous patience when hunting and conserve their energy and resources by hibernating.