Watch the world’s smallest bear copy its friends’ facial expressions
Humans are master impersonators—even infants can mimic the facial expressions of their friends and parents. Other socially sophisticated primates can copy others’ faces during play, with toothy grins bouncing from one gorilla or orangutan to the next. Now, scientists have captured video of the world’s smallest bear doing the same thing, the first time that a nonprimate has been shown to ape faces.
Researchers took short videos of 22 sun bears (Helarctos malayanus) spontaneously playing together over several years at the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre in Sandakan, Malaysia. This diminutive bear is elusive and solitary, spending most of its life roaming the forests of Southeast Asia. But bears at the center engaged in hundreds of mostly gentle play fights, even though the enclosure was large enough that they could have kept to themselves.