Grizzly Man's Morality

In an attempt to reveal the formative and transformative aspects of Timothy Treadwell's project, I rely upon an ethological framework developed by Matthew Calarco that moves beyond the narrow conception of ethology as a scientific practice aimed at systematic and rigorous documentation of the quantifiable aspects of animal behavior. While many people might be hesitant to conceive of Treadwell's project as an ethological one, I hope to illuminate the ways in which his life among bears and foxes might be understood as emblematic of a kind of amateur ethology and ethological philosophy (i.e., ethosophy) and then use this understanding of Treadwell's work to give shape to the disclosive, generative, and transformative aspects of such practice. I then suggest that ethological experiments of this sort, while subjecting practitioners to certain risks, are vitally important for understanding human-animal relationships, reducing conflict between humans and other predator species, and generating systemic cultural changes in view of other animals.