'There's no question he had a remarkable repertoire with bears and had a remarkable ability for them to tolerate him ... (but) just so people don't get the wrong idea, Tim definitely knew there were bears out there that were bad medicine.'" (Manning, p. 1)
The phrase 'bad medicine' here implies a certain moral proposition in the bear's behavior, attributing a distinctly human way of perceiving the act of killing to its actions. However, as the article shows, this anthropomorphic phrasing may be misplaced, particularly given Treadwell's dangerous intrusion into the territory of his study subjects. This denotes that it may not be entirely rational to project the notion of 'murder' to the killing but that human beings will tend to do so. The notion of a 'bad' bear indicates that there is some moral action which has occurred, a perception which is a departure from the decidedly objective selectivity of nature.
That line between nature's objectivity and the emotional qualities that drive human moral behavior becomes even more difficult to draw as the core traits of certain animals come more to resemble human beings. This is quite well illustrated in the disturbing case of Andrew Oberle, the chimp sanctuary employee who was mauled to a devastating extent by two male chimpanzees. Here, the animals can actually be evaluated according to their emotional disposition, but one must be careful not to conflate this with an act of 'evil' or 'cruelty.'...
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