After a title like that whetting my curiosity, I want an actual answer as to whether a bear can develop such a phobia!
A person dying from a phobia . . . that's such a bad case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And, in what sense is it an irrational phobia, then?! William James, in his The Will to Believe, argued that belief can be rational if it creates the thing it represents. One of his examples was a person who must believe he can make the jump in order to make it. Not believing he can make the jump will deprive him of those crucial centimeters it takes to make it. Well, okay, you/they define an irrational belief as "significantly out of proportion", so I guess the psychologists have wiggled themselves out of that one!
We'll have to track the bear down and ask her. I do know the bear is smart and will look for fatter trees to climb in the future 😁
Thanks for the info about William James. I think my life can be defined by sheer stubbornness ( I will do this...that's my way, always). I definitely want to read The Will to Believe--Project Guttenberg has it as an ebook. Bedtime reading tonight.
Thanks for reading and commenting, @alexanderalexis. Always interesting.