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Bears are extraordinary animals. Their complexity and adapting capacity is comparable only with humans. Beside humans, bears were the only mammalian species capable to occupy every habitat type on Earth, from arctic, tundra, rain forests to deserts. This was possible due to their highly developed brain, excellent body tools and omnivorous diet system that permitted an enormous ecological plasticity. The studies presented in this book are an attempt to demonstrate that bears have individual personality, the profile of each one being construed as architectures of complex behavioral traits. It is a multi-level approach to investigate ways in which bears respond to their environments at various scales in the Carpathian habitat heterogeneity. Because habitats are not always coinciding with favorable resource patches, carnivores face a trade-off between resource use and avoidance of humans. Whether or not this trade-off tip towards avoidance, at bears seems to depend on components of their personality that have powerful influence on their survival strategies in human-dominated landscapes.

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I was born in a small miner town in the Eastern Carpathians, where my life got oriented towards two essential topics: nature and flying. After finishing an aeronautical high school, my profession turned towards nature. I started to observe closely large carnivores. Thus wings, planes and bears remained the biggest passions of my life.

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