Free Republic

Pet dog? Cat? Maybe a goldfish? Not for naturalist Casey Anderson, who adopted a grizzly bear cub seven years ago after the furry one-month-old was found orphaned in an overpopulated wildlife park. Anderson named his new pet Brutus, and the two have been inseparable ever since — together, they've set out on a yearlong mission to chronicle the lives of Yellowstone's vulnerable grizzly bears. The pair star in the National Geographic special “Expedition Grizzly featuring Casey Anderson,” airing Sunday, May 3 at p.m. ET/PT.

People in Cali, Colombia, are shocked to see the bond between a large African lion and a woman who saved it from abuse, involving long, affectionate kisses and hugs between the pair. Ana Julia Torres, who runs the Villa Lorena animal shelter in Cali, fed and nursed Jupiter the African lion back to health years ago after it was found abused and emaciated in a traveling circus.

Humpback nuzzled saviors in thanks after they untangled her from crab lines, diver says A humpback whale freed by divers from a tangle of crab trap lines near the Farallon Islands nudged rescuers and flapped around in what marine experts said was a rare and remarkable encounter. ... The 45- to 50-foot female humpback, estimated to weigh 50 tons, was on the humpbacks' usual migratory route between the Northern California coast and Baja California when it became entangled in the nylon ropes that link crab pots. It was spotted by a crab fisherman at 8:30 a.m. Sunday in the open...

What's your take on Timothy Treadwell.

A MAN I KNOW, NED MARKOSIAN, teaches a doctrine called presentism. In presentism the past and the future don't exist. Aristotle is dead; therefore, there was no Aristotle. We meet to talk about this over coffee, maybe the ultimate nonpresentist drink. He has applied for and gotten tenure, and writes and publishes, hurling himself into that unreality, the future. I have been thinking about presentism lately, and consciousness, and language. Linguist Derek Bickerton wrote, "Only language could have broken through the prison of immediate experience in which every other creature is locked, releasing us into infinite freedoms of space...