Hibernation to Huckleberries
understand what bears are doing this time of year. If you recall from previous Hibernation to Huckleberries articles, bears typically sleep through the winter months. Although popular belief is that bears hibernate, they actually use a similar form of dormancy known as “sleeping”. The difference between hibernating and sleeping is that bears are able to wake up during warm days in winter, and become active for a short period before returning to sleep, where hibernators remain in complete dormancy through the entire winter. During this sleep, the bear’s heart beats slower so it can save the energy it needs to survive for weeks. Bear instinct helps them know to eat extra in the months before hibernation in order to fatten up their bodies so they can live off of the fat until they wake up in the Spring. Bears are mammals, which means they give birth to baby bears that quickly grow into cubs when there are available food sources. Cubs born in the winter grow very quickly and survive their first few months on the mother’s fatty milk. The mother bear introduces the cubs to other foods when
they are about six months old. Most bears are omnivores, largely consuming plants, such as leaves, roots, nuts, berries, fruit, and twigs. However, they also eat insects, fish, and other small animals. During the cubs’ first year, the mother bear’s most important role is teaching her cubs how to survive, with a central task being learning how and where to find food. This season for bears is very active as mother bears and the cubs prowl between rivers and forests in search of food to help the cubs grow quickly. There are many perils along the way for young cubs; sadly some of the greatest threats are the humans who intersect with them in wild places. When a black bear
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enters civilization to seek food, it becomes vulnerable to death or harm by automobiles. Defenders of Wildlife, an organization that works to defend wildlife and its habitats, says that the black bear population needs “a minimum of 500,000 to 1 million acres of area to find food, shelter, and mates. So habitat loss due to development is a major threat to their survival. The leading cause of bear deaths is car accidents— over the last five years, between 125 - 175 bears have been killed each year by vehicles.” While nature herself presents a variety of obstacles for bears, we don’t perceive nature as a threat to bears but instead a part of the natural order. While various species have gone extinct without
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