When bears are drawn to cabins or campsites, it’s because they’re looking for food.
Bears rarely turn down a snack ( even if it’s in a tent or cooler) They’re vegetarians for the most part, and feed primarily on berries and nuts.īlack bears are poor hunters, though they will catch fish during spawning season, and if they’re able to ambush a fawn or moose calf in the spring, they will. Like most animals, bears are constantly looking for food and will spend up to eight hours a day foraging. Hibernating bears lose at least half their body fat, but - amazingly - they don’t lose any muscle mass or much calcium from their bones. They don’t eat, drink, urinate or defecate. When bears hibernate, their body temperature drops from 38 C to 33 C, and their heart rate goes from 50 beats a minute to 10. Bears lose half their body fat while hibernating The following spring, she pushes them out of the den to be on their own. The cubs stay with their mother all summer and hibernate with her over the winter. The cubs nurse while she continues to doze periodically, and when they all emerge in April or May, the cubs have grown to weigh around five pounds each. In January, she gives birth, typically to one or two cubs. In October or November, the female looks for a spot to hibernate, usually under a tree stump or log, which she lines with grass, twigs and leaves. Bears give birth before emerging from hibernation Through a survival adaptation called “delayed implantation,” the embryo doesn’t implant in the uterus until the fall – and then only if the female has gained enough body fat to see her through the winter months when she is hibernating. The only time males and females get together is in June when they mate. If food supplies are good, female bears double their size over the summer, in preparation for hibernation. The females weigh, on average, between 100-150 pounds the males between 150-180. Even when they’re awake, they try to avoid humans – and they’re asleep for half the year, hidden away in their dens. In fact, the biggest threat to their survival is starvation. Bears are shy animals. Hibernation is their way of surviving a long winter when there’s little food available. Rick Stronks, the chief naturalist at Algonquin Provincial Park, shares some interesting facts about these seasonal deep sleepers: As winter weather rolls in, black bears are bedding down for hibernation.
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