I believe many animals once trained can easily tell if the fence is on.
Some cattle farmers will tell you that the cows can "smell" if the
electricity is on...

I doubt that but bear are similar to hogs imo and last winter I bought a
floating tank heater to use in my plastic 55 gallon water barrels that have
hog nipple drinkers on them for my hogs. Anyway, as soon as I plugged the
heater up (and yes the circuit had a good ground), the hogs would come up
to drink, get about half inch from the nipple and sorta jump back... unplug
it and they would drink, plug it up and they would jump back... so while I
could not feel anything even fully grounding one hand to the earth nether
on the heater itself, in the water, or on the nipple, the hogs could tell
there was a minute amount of current obviously in the water and thus out
through the nipple making them the path to ground...

So yes animals as usual are far more sensitive to things than we humans
are.

But add hunger into the situation and then a smart bear will quickly learn
to deal with a split second of pain for a happy meal of brood...

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