TED2014
Jon Mooallem: How the teddy bear taught us compassion
Filmed:
Readability: 4.5
1,148,716 views
In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt legendarily spared the life of a black bear -- and prompted a plush toy craze for so-called "teddy bears." Writer Jon Mooallem digs into this toy story and asks us to consider how the tales we tell about wild animals have real consequences for a species' chance of survival -- and the natural world at large.
Jon Mooallem - Writer
Jon Mooallem is the author of "Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America." Full bio
Jon Mooallem is the author of "Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America." Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:12
So it was the fall of 1902,
0
960
2559
00:15
and President Theodore Roosevelt
1
3519
1918
00:17
needed a little break from the White House,
2
5437
1780
00:19
so he took a train to Mississippi
3
7217
2378
00:21
to do a little black bear hunting outside of a town
4
9595
2128
00:23
called Smedes.
5
11723
2187
00:25
The first day of the hunt,
they didn't see a single bear,
they didn't see a single bear,
6
13910
2060
00:27
so it was a big bummer for everyone,
7
15970
1520
00:29
but the second day, the dogs cornered one
8
17490
2844
00:32
after a really long chase, but by that point,
9
20334
2400
00:34
the president had given up
10
22734
1444
00:36
and gone back to camp for lunch,
11
24178
1742
00:37
so his hunting guide cracked the animal
12
25920
2611
00:40
on the top of the head with the butt of his rifle,
13
28531
2668
00:43
and then tied it up to a tree
14
31199
1708
00:44
and started tooting away on his bugle
15
32907
2612
00:47
to call Roosevelt back so he could have the honor
16
35519
2039
00:49
of shooting it.
17
37558
1516
00:51
The bear was a female.
18
39074
2357
00:53
It was dazed, injured,
19
41431
2576
00:56
severely underweight, a little mangy-looking,
20
44007
3647
00:59
and when Roosevelt saw this animal
21
47654
2067
01:01
tied up to the tree,
22
49721
1622
01:03
he just couldn't bring himself to fire at it.
23
51343
1799
01:05
He felt like that would go against his code
24
53142
2151
01:07
as a sportsman.
25
55293
1966
01:09
A few days later, the scene was memorialized
26
57259
2701
01:11
in a political cartoon back in Washington.
27
59960
3035
01:14
It was called "Drawing a Line in Mississippi,"
28
62995
2121
01:17
and it showed Roosevelt with
his gun down and his arm out,
his gun down and his arm out,
29
65116
2379
01:19
sparing the bear's life,
30
67495
1637
01:21
and the bear was sitting on its hind legs
31
69132
1526
01:22
with these two big, frightened, wide eyes
32
70658
2038
01:24
and little ears pricked up at the top of its head.
33
72696
2130
01:26
It looked really helpless, like you just wanted to
34
74826
1508
01:28
sweep it up into your arms
35
76334
1700
01:30
and reassure it.
36
78034
1216
01:31
It wouldn't have looked familiar at the time,
37
79250
1466
01:32
but if you go looking for the cartoon now,
38
80716
2068
01:34
you recognize the animal right away:
39
82784
2736
01:37
It's a teddy bear.
40
85520
1954
01:39
And this is how the teddy bear was born.
41
87474
1621
01:41
Essentially, toymakers took
the bear from the cartoon,
the bear from the cartoon,
42
89095
2508
01:43
turned it into a plush toy, and then named it
43
91603
1600
01:45
after President Roosevelt -- Teddy's bear.
44
93203
3194
01:48
And I do feel a little ridiculous
45
96397
2144
01:50
that I'm up here on this stage
46
98541
2935
01:53
and I'm choosing to use my time
47
101476
1418
01:54
to tell you about a 100-year-old story
48
102894
2268
01:57
about the invention of a squishy kid's toy,
49
105162
3098
02:00
but I'd argue that the invention of the teddy bear,
50
108260
3960
02:04
inside that story is a more important story,
51
112220
2961
02:07
a story about how dramatically our ideas
52
115181
2228
02:09
about nature can change,
53
117409
1596
02:11
and also about how, on the planet right now,
54
119005
3340
02:14
the stories that we tell
55
122345
2096
02:16
are dramatically changing nature.
56
124441
2268
02:18
Because think about the teddy bear.
57
126709
1532
02:20
For us, in retrospect, it feels like an obvious fit,
58
128241
2505
02:22
because bears are so cute and cuddly,
59
130746
1503
02:24
and who wouldn't want to give
one to their kids to play with,
one to their kids to play with,
60
132249
2472
02:26
but the truth is that in 1902,
61
134721
2532
02:29
bears weren't cute and cuddly.
62
137253
1628
02:30
I mean, they looked the same,
63
138881
1301
02:32
but no one thought of them that way.
64
140182
1133
02:33
In 1902, bears were monsters.
65
141315
2846
02:36
Bears were something that frickin' terrified kids.
66
144161
3324
02:39
For generations at that point,
67
147485
1660
02:41
the bear had been a shorthand for all the danger
68
149145
3273
02:44
that people were encountering on the frontier,
69
152418
1759
02:46
and the federal government was actually
70
154177
1368
02:47
systematically exterminating bears
71
155545
2285
02:49
and lots of other predators too,
72
157830
1253
02:51
like coyotes and wolves.
73
159083
1850
02:52
These animals, they were being demonized.
74
160933
1848
02:54
They were called murderers
75
162781
1298
02:56
because they killed people's livestock.
76
164079
2156
02:58
One government biologist, he explained this
77
166235
2538
03:00
war on animals like the bear by saying
78
168773
2180
03:02
that they no longer had a place
79
170953
2390
03:05
in our advancing civilization,
80
173343
2246
03:07
and so we were just clearing them out of the way.
81
175589
3728
03:11
In one 10-year period, close to half a million wolves
82
179317
3766
03:15
had been slaughtered.
83
183083
1207
03:16
The grizzly would soon be wiped out
84
184290
1857
03:18
from 95 percent of its original territory,
85
186147
3433
03:21
and whereas once there had been 30 million bison
86
189580
3222
03:24
moving across the plains, and you would have
87
192802
1618
03:26
these stories of trains having to stop
88
194420
1708
03:28
for four or five hours so that these thick,
89
196128
1988
03:30
living rivers of the animals could pour over the tracks,
90
198116
3328
03:33
now, by 1902, there were maybe
less than 100 left in the wild.
less than 100 left in the wild.
91
201444
5359
03:38
And so what I'm saying is, the teddy bear was born
92
206803
3037
03:41
into the middle of this great spasm of extermination,
93
209840
3524
03:45
and you can see it as a sign that
94
213364
1546
03:46
maybe some people deep down
95
214910
1640
03:48
were starting to feel conflicted about all that killing.
96
216550
4066
03:52
America still hated the bear and feared it,
97
220616
3028
03:55
but all of a sudden, America also wanted
98
223644
1556
03:57
to give the bear a great big hug.
99
225200
2886
04:00
So this is something that I've been really
curious about in the last few years.
curious about in the last few years.
100
228086
2229
04:02
How do we imagine animals,
101
230315
1674
04:03
how do we think and feel about them,
102
231989
1598
04:05
and how do their reputations get written
103
233587
2476
04:08
and then rewritten in our minds?
104
236063
2256
04:10
We're here living in the eye of a great storm
105
238319
2844
04:13
of extinction where half the species on the planet
106
241163
2852
04:16
could be gone by the end of the century,
107
244015
2152
04:18
and so why is it that we come to care about
108
246167
1534
04:19
some of those species and not others?
109
247701
2870
04:22
Well, there's a new field, a relatively new field
110
250571
2130
04:24
of social science that started looking at
111
252701
1446
04:26
these questions and trying to unpack the powerful
112
254147
2168
04:28
and sometimes pretty schizophrenic relationships
113
256315
1732
04:30
that we have to animals,
114
258047
2121
04:32
and I spent a lot of time looking through
115
260168
1441
04:33
their academic journals,
116
261609
2024
04:35
and all I can really say is that their findings
117
263633
1806
04:37
are astonishingly wide-ranging.
118
265439
1986
04:39
So some of my favorites include that
119
267425
1826
04:41
the more television a person
watches in Upstate New York,
watches in Upstate New York,
120
269251
2641
04:43
the more he or she is afraid
121
271892
1653
04:45
of being attacked by a black bear.
122
273545
1697
04:47
If you show a tiger to an American,
123
275242
2788
04:50
they're much more likely to assume that it's female
124
278030
2110
04:52
and not male.
125
280140
1260
04:53
In a study where a fake snake
126
281400
1768
04:55
and a fake turtle were put on the side of the road,
127
283168
1985
04:57
drivers hit the snake much
more often than the turtle,
more often than the turtle,
128
285153
2252
04:59
and about three percent of
drivers who hit the fake animals
drivers who hit the fake animals
129
287405
2064
05:01
seemed to do it on purpose.
130
289469
2278
05:03
Women are more likely than men to get a
131
291747
2590
05:06
"magical feeling" when they see dolphins in the surf.
132
294337
3035
05:09
Sixty-eight percent of mothers with
133
297372
1812
05:11
"high feelings of entitlement and self-esteem"
134
299184
3380
05:14
identified with the dancing cats
135
302564
1645
05:16
in a commercial for Purina. (Laughter)
136
304209
2465
05:18
Americans consider lobsters
137
306674
1685
05:20
more important than pigeons
138
308359
1296
05:21
but also much, much stupider.
139
309655
2186
05:23
Wild turkeys are seen as only slightly
more dangerous than sea otters,
more dangerous than sea otters,
140
311841
2996
05:26
and pandas are twice as lovable as ladybugs.
141
314837
5173
05:32
So some of this is physical, right?
142
320010
1433
05:33
We tend to sympathize more
with animals that look like us,
with animals that look like us,
143
321443
2623
05:36
and especially that resemble human babies,
144
324066
1630
05:37
so with big, forward-facing eyes
145
325696
1427
05:39
and circular faces,
146
327123
1262
05:40
kind of a roly-poly posture.
147
328385
1734
05:42
This is why, if you get a Christmas card from, like,
148
330119
2035
05:44
your great aunt in Minnesota,
149
332154
1140
05:45
there's usually a fuzzy penguin chick on it,
150
333294
1573
05:46
and not something like a Glacier Bay wolf spider.
151
334867
2712
05:49
But it's not all physical, right?
152
337579
2669
05:52
There's a cultural dimension to
how we think about animals,
how we think about animals,
153
340248
3184
05:55
and we're telling stories about these animals,
154
343432
1880
05:57
and like all stories,
155
345312
1358
05:58
they are shaped by the times and the places
156
346670
2073
06:00
in which we're telling them.
157
348743
876
06:01
So think about that moment
158
349619
1474
06:03
back in 1902 again where a ferocious bear
159
351093
2918
06:06
became a teddy bear.
160
354011
1433
06:07
What was the context?
Well, America was urbanizing.
Well, America was urbanizing.
161
355444
3067
06:10
For the first time, nearly a
majority of people lived in cities,
majority of people lived in cities,
162
358511
2759
06:13
so there was a growing distance
between us and nature.
between us and nature.
163
361270
2436
06:15
There was a safe space where we could
164
363706
1792
06:17
reconsider the bear and romanticize it.
165
365498
2674
06:20
Nature could only start to
seem this pure and adorable
seem this pure and adorable
166
368172
2734
06:22
because we didn't have to be afraid of it anymore.
167
370906
2754
06:25
And you can see that cycle playing out
168
373660
1525
06:27
again and again with all kinds of animals.
169
375185
2162
06:29
It seems like we're always stuck between
170
377347
1876
06:31
demonizing a species and wanting to wipe it out,
171
379223
2407
06:33
and then when we get very close to doing that,
172
381630
1580
06:35
empathizing with it as an underdog
173
383210
2537
06:37
and wanting to show it compassion.
174
385747
2525
06:40
So we exert our power,
175
388272
1798
06:42
but then we're unsettled
176
390070
1444
06:43
by how powerful we are.
177
391514
2775
06:46
So for example, this is one of
178
394289
2124
06:48
probably thousands of letters and drawings
179
396413
2637
06:51
that kids sent to the Bush administration,
180
399050
1544
06:52
begging it to protect the polar bear
181
400594
1711
06:54
under the Endangered Species Act,
182
402305
1267
06:55
and these were sent back in the mid-2000s,
183
403572
2508
06:58
when awareness of climate
change was suddenly surging.
change was suddenly surging.
184
406080
2153
07:00
We kept seeing that image of a polar bear
185
408233
1329
07:01
stranded on a little ice floe
186
409562
1418
07:02
looking really morose.
187
410980
1347
07:04
I spent days looking through these files.
188
412327
1764
07:06
I really love them. This one's my favorite.
189
414091
2159
07:08
If you can see, it's a polar bear that's drowning
190
416250
2111
07:10
and then it's also being eaten simultaneously
191
418361
2415
07:12
by a lobster and a shark.
192
420776
2704
07:15
This one came from a kid named Fritz,
193
423480
1712
07:17
and he's actually got a solution to climate change.
194
425192
1694
07:18
He's got it all worked out to an ethanol-based solution.
195
426886
1846
07:20
He says, "I feel bad about the polar bears.
196
428732
2650
07:23
I like polar bears.
197
431382
2112
07:25
Everyone can use corn juice for cars. From Fritz."
198
433494
5786
07:31
So 200 years ago, you would have Arctic explorers
199
439280
2995
07:34
writing about polar bears leaping into their boats
200
442275
2308
07:36
and trying to devour them,
201
444583
1243
07:37
even if they lit the bear on fire,
202
445826
1667
07:39
but these kids don't see the polar bear that way,
203
447493
2180
07:41
and actually they don't even see the polar bear
204
449673
1790
07:43
the way that I did back in the '80s.
205
451463
1760
07:45
I mean, we thought of these animals
206
453223
1120
07:46
as mysterious and terrifying lords of the Arctic.
207
454343
2866
07:49
But look now how quickly that climate change
208
457209
2320
07:51
has flipped the image of the animal in our minds.
209
459529
2886
07:54
It's gone from that bloodthirsty man-killer
210
462415
2440
07:56
to this delicate, drowning victim,
211
464855
3074
07:59
and when you think about it, that's kind of
212
467929
1513
08:01
the conclusion to the story
213
469442
1981
08:03
that the teddy bear started telling back in 1902,
214
471423
3302
08:06
because back then, America had more or less
215
474725
2890
08:09
conquered its share of the continent.
216
477615
1315
08:10
We were just getting around to
217
478930
1303
08:12
polishing off these last wild predators.
218
480233
2018
08:14
Now, society's reach has expanded
219
482251
2554
08:16
all the way to the top of the world,
220
484805
2060
08:18
and it's made even these, the most remote,
221
486865
2294
08:21
the most powerful bears on the planet,
222
489159
2032
08:23
seem like adorable and blameless victims.
223
491191
3499
08:26
But you know, there's also a
postscript to the teddy bear story
postscript to the teddy bear story
224
494690
2891
08:29
that not a lot of people talk about.
225
497581
1637
08:31
We're going to talk about it,
226
499218
1783
08:33
because even though it didn't really take long
227
501001
2173
08:35
after Roosevelt's hunt in 1902
228
503174
1800
08:36
for the toy to become a full-blown craze,
229
504974
1977
08:38
most people figured it was a fad,
230
506951
2501
08:41
it was a sort of silly political novelty item
231
509452
2232
08:43
and it would go away once the president left office,
232
511684
2242
08:45
and so by 1909, when Roosevelt's successor,
233
513926
3797
08:49
William Howard Taft,
234
517723
1425
08:51
was getting ready to be inaugurated,
235
519148
1408
08:52
the toy industry was on the hunt
236
520556
1932
08:54
for the next big thing.
237
522488
2827
08:57
They didn't do too well.
238
525315
2257
08:59
That January, Taft was the guest of honor
239
527572
2599
09:02
at a banquet in Atlanta,
240
530171
1439
09:03
and for days in advance,
241
531610
1869
09:05
the big news was the menu.
242
533479
1445
09:06
They were going to be serving him
243
534924
1086
09:08
a Southern specialty, a delicacy, really,
244
536010
2064
09:10
called possum and taters.
245
538074
2906
09:12
So you would have a whole opossum
246
540980
2602
09:15
roasted on a bed of sweet potatoes,
247
543582
1365
09:16
and then sometimes they'd leave
248
544947
1447
09:18
the big tail on it like a big, meaty noodle.
249
546394
3484
09:21
The one brought to Taft's table
250
549878
1679
09:23
weighed 18 pounds.
251
551557
3185
09:26
So after dinner, the orchestra started to play,
252
554742
2704
09:29
and the guests burst into song,
253
557446
1840
09:31
and all of a sudden, Taft was surprised
254
559286
1624
09:32
with the presentation of a gift
255
560910
1722
09:34
from a group of local supporters,
256
562632
1892
09:36
and this was a stuffed opossum toy,
257
564524
2436
09:38
all beady-eyed and bald-eared,
258
566960
2210
09:41
and it was a new product they were putting forward
259
569170
2700
09:43
to be the William Taft presidency's answer
260
571870
2722
09:46
to Teddy Roosevelt's teddy bear.
261
574592
3548
09:50
They were calling it the "billy possum."
262
578140
4446
09:54
Within 24 hours, the Georgia Billy Possum Company
263
582586
3850
09:58
was up and running, brokering deals
264
586436
1550
09:59
for these things nationwide,
265
587986
1600
10:01
and the Los Angeles Times announced,
266
589586
1598
10:03
very confidently, "The teddy bear
267
591184
1952
10:05
has been relegated to a seat in the rear,
268
593136
2526
10:07
and for four years, possibly eight,
269
595662
2598
10:10
the children of the United States
270
598260
1954
10:12
will play with billy possum."
271
600214
3232
10:15
So from that point, there was a fit of opossum fever.
272
603446
2124
10:17
There were billy possum postcards, billy possum pins,
273
605570
2468
10:20
billy possum pitchers for your cream at coffee time.
274
608038
2162
10:22
There were smaller billy possums on a stick
275
610200
1730
10:23
that kids could wave around like flags.
276
611930
2942
10:26
But even with all this marketing,
277
614872
1918
10:28
the life of the billy possum
278
616790
2030
10:30
turned out to be just pathetically brief.
279
618820
3184
10:34
The toy was an absolute flop,
280
622004
2043
10:36
and it was almost completely forgotten
281
624047
1579
10:37
by the end of the year,
282
625626
1368
10:38
and what that means is that the billy possum
283
626994
2092
10:41
didn't even make it to Christmastime,
284
629086
1500
10:42
which when you think about it is
285
630586
1040
10:43
a special sort of tragedy for a toy.
286
631626
3849
10:47
So we can explain that failure two ways.
287
635475
1923
10:49
The first, well, it's pretty obvious.
288
637398
2190
10:51
I'm going to go ahead and say it out loud anyway:
289
639588
1888
10:53
Opossums are hideous. (Laughter)
290
641476
2861
10:56
But maybe more importantly is that
291
644337
2663
10:59
the story of the billy possum was all wrong,
292
647000
2690
11:01
especially compared
293
649690
1531
11:03
to the backstory of the teddy bear.
294
651221
2081
11:05
Think about it: for most of
human's evolutionary history,
human's evolutionary history,
295
653302
2242
11:07
what's made bears impressive to us
296
655544
2325
11:09
has been their complete independence from us.
297
657869
2172
11:12
It's that they live these parallel lives
298
660041
2585
11:14
as menaces and competitors.
299
662626
2505
11:17
By the time Roosevelt went hunting in Mississippi,
300
665131
2355
11:19
that stature was being crushed,
301
667486
1978
11:21
and the animal that he had roped to a tree
302
669464
2238
11:23
really was a symbol for all bears.
303
671702
2301
11:26
Whether those animals lived or died now
304
674003
2427
11:28
was entirely up to the compassion
305
676430
3010
11:31
or the indifference of people.
306
679440
2417
11:33
That said something really ominous
307
681857
1824
11:35
about the future of bears,
308
683681
2682
11:38
but it also said something very
unsettling about who we'd become,
unsettling about who we'd become,
309
686363
3137
11:41
if the survival of even an animal like that
310
689500
2442
11:43
was up to us now.
311
691942
2289
11:46
So now, a century later, if you're at all
312
694231
2080
11:48
paying attention to what's
happening in the environment,
happening in the environment,
313
696311
2200
11:50
you feel that discomfort so much more intensely.
314
698511
3678
11:54
We're living now in an age of what scientists
315
702189
2822
11:57
have started to call "conservation reliance,"
316
705011
2210
11:59
and what that term means is that we've disrupted
317
707221
2190
12:01
so much that nature can't possibly
stand on its own anymore,
stand on its own anymore,
318
709411
3164
12:04
and most endangered species
319
712575
1702
12:06
are only going to survive
320
714277
1772
12:08
if we stay out there in the landscape
321
716049
2118
12:10
riggging the world around them in their favor.
322
718167
2496
12:12
So we've gone hands-on
323
720663
1856
12:14
and we can't ever take our hands off,
324
722519
2438
12:16
and that's a hell of a lot of work.
325
724957
1893
12:18
Right now, we're training condors
326
726850
3079
12:21
not to perch on power lines.
327
729929
1952
12:23
We teach whooping cranes
to migrate south for the winter
to migrate south for the winter
328
731881
2713
12:26
behind little ultra-light airplanes.
329
734594
2299
12:28
We're out there feeding plague vaccine to ferrets.
330
736893
3309
12:32
We monitor pygmy rabbits with drones.
331
740202
4350
12:36
So we've gone from annihilating species
332
744552
3317
12:39
to micromanaging the survival of a lot of species
333
747869
3504
12:43
indefinitely, and which ones?
334
751373
1942
12:45
Well, the ones that we've told
335
753315
1192
12:46
compelling stories about,
336
754507
1624
12:48
the ones we've decided ought to stick around.
337
756131
3215
12:51
The line between conservation and domestication
338
759346
3574
12:54
is blurred.
339
762920
2025
12:56
So what I've been saying is that the stories
340
764945
1852
12:58
that we tell about wild animals are so subjective
341
766797
2623
13:01
they can be irrational
342
769420
1162
13:02
or romanticized or sensationalized.
343
770582
2184
13:04
Sometimes they just have
nothing to do with the facts.
nothing to do with the facts.
344
772766
2749
13:07
But in a world of conservation reliance,
345
775515
3250
13:10
those stories have very real consequences,
346
778765
2206
13:12
because now, how we feel about an animal
347
780971
2428
13:15
affects its survival
348
783399
1630
13:17
more than anything that you read about
349
785029
2360
13:19
in ecology textbooks.
350
787389
2049
13:21
Storytelling matters now.
351
789438
2402
13:23
Emotion matters.
352
791840
1533
13:25
Our imagination has become an ecological force.
353
793373
5652
13:31
And so maybe the teddy bear worked in part
354
799025
1937
13:32
because the legend of Roosevelt
355
800962
2691
13:35
and that bear in Mississippi
356
803653
2055
13:37
was kind of like an allegory
357
805708
1460
13:39
of this great responsibility that society
358
807168
2093
13:41
was just beginning to face up to back then.
359
809261
2694
13:43
It would be another 71 years
360
811955
2420
13:46
before the Endangered Species Act was passed,
361
814375
1854
13:48
but really, here's its whole ethos
362
816229
2330
13:50
boiled down into something like a scene
363
818559
1954
13:52
you'd see in a stained glass window.
364
820513
2346
13:54
The bear is a helpless victim tied to a tree,
365
822859
2992
13:57
and the president of the United States
366
825851
2551
14:00
decided to show it some mercy.
367
828402
2392
14:02
Thank you.
368
830794
2646
14:05
(Applause)
369
833440
1714
14:07
[Illustrations by Wendy MacNaughton]
370
835154
2413
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Jon Mooallem - WriterJon Mooallem is the author of "Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America."
Why you should listen
What do we see when we look at wild animals -- do we respond to human-like traits, or thrill to the idea of their utter unfamiliarity? Jon Mooallem's book, Wild Ones , examines our relationship with wild animals both familiar and feral, telling stories of the North American environmental movement from its unlikely birth, and following three species who've come to symbolize our complicated relationship with whatever "nature" even means anymore.
Mooallem has written about everything from the murder of Hawaiian monk seals, to Idahoan utopians, to the world’s most famous ventriloquist, to the sad, secret history of the invention of the high five. A recent piece, "American Hippopotamus," was an Atavist story on, really, a plan in 1910 to jumpstart the hippopotamus ranching industry in America.
Jon Mooallem | Speaker | TED.com