How much bears eat

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Travel A road trip in Burgundy reveals far more than fine wine. Travel My Hometown In L. Subscriber Exclusive Content. The ability to gorge on a bonanza of food and convert it to fat is a lifesaving ability. Every year, at the end of summer, grizzly bears in Alaska wait for spawning salmon to return in their thousands. Their physiology changes and they become eating machines, entering a state called hyperphagia. In this state their appetite is almost insatiable and they will eat for twenty hours in a row, sleep for four and then go again.

There are so many salmon that the bears tend to eat just the fat rich eggs, skin, and brain of the fish that they catch. They can consume a staggering , calories per day, the equivalent of boiled eggs. Home Episodes Clips Wonder facts. Main content.

Wonder facts: Bears. You must enable JavaScript to play content. A black bear has a long snout, rounded ears, and small eyes. In the Southeast, bears are mostly black and often have a brown snout, while in the western U.

Although large animals, black bears are surprisingly quick and agile. They can sprint up to 35 miles per hour and climb feet up a tree within 30 seconds. A bear might shuffle along, nibbling plants and acting like a gentle giant, but looks can be deceiving.

Black bears are strong and muscular with record weights over pounds. Male black bears typically weigh between and pounds, while smaller females weigh 90 to pounds. Black bears are awake from spring through fall, and mostly asleep in winter, curled up in dens.

In more temperate areas, male bears and females without cubs may not den at all during the winter. Bears generally explore their habitat alone, except when gathering at places with plentiful food, like acorns in oak forests or corn in farm fields. Males and females pair up during the summer breeding season. Females raise cubs for up to a year and a half. Bears tend to be most active at dusk and dawn.

Bears do not have territories, they have home ranges. Panthers have territories, and male panthers actively defend their area and will not let other male panthers live there.

Bears have home ranges, where they share space with other bears of both sexes, just not at the same time unless it is a male and female during the breeding season. Males have larger home ranges up to square miles than females up to 50 square miles.

Bears travel farthest when food is harder to find, especially in early spring. A black bear can smell the scent of a human in a footprint, ripe berries in the air, and a steak grilling a mile away. A bear can smell seven times better than a bloodhound, known for tracking lost people. Its big nose has an area inside called the nasal mucosa that is times larger than ours. An amazing amount of olfactory information swirls in from the outside world.

Every fall, bears are eating ravenously. To put on enough fat to last through the winter denning time, they may spend 20 hours a day eating and may put on up to pounds in a few weeks. During spring and summer, bears eat around 5, calories a day, but in the fall, they are trying to eat up to 20, calories every day.

In the Southeast when acorns are plentiful on trees, bears gorge on the energy-packed nuts. Read about hyperphagia….

Bears eat both meat and vegetables, which makes them omnivores. In spring, they tend to eat mostly plants. In summer, they feast on berries and insects, and in fall, they harvest nuts and more berries. They also eat carrion dead animals , small mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. A black bear mother may raise from one to five cubs that are born in a winter den. Cubs depend on their mothers for about a year and half. She feeds them, teaches them, and protects them from predators that include foxes, coyotes, bobcats, dogs, and other bears.

Read more about bear cubs. Bears are great moms. The longer you stay, the longer she will be separated from her cubs. Typically, mom will return to gather up her family when no people or pets are around, usually after dark. As the cubs get older and more mobile, mother bears often leave their cubs to go forage for food the kids are always hungry as much as two miles away.

If you believe the cub is truly orphaned, do not touch it. Instead, snap a quick photo, note the location and immediately leave the area.

Contact your state wildlife agency for further guidance. When the mother is ready to breed again, her female young tend to live near her, but her male young have to leave to find their own area to live.

These young male bears can get in trouble by looking for easy food sources where people live, like garbage, pet food, or bird seed. Some people believe that bears are not true hibernators. Squirrels, bats, rodents, marmots and other true hibernators enter a state close to suspended animation where body temperatures fall close to freezing and metabolisms slow almost to a halt.

Read more about hibernating bears…. Photo by Missouri Department of Conservation. Black B. Brown C. Cinnamon D. Blonde E. Blue-Grey F. White G.

All of the above. Black bear is a species, Ursus americanus , not a color. Black bears come in more colors than any other North American mammal. In the eastern third of North America, the majority of black bears are a deep black color, and about a quarter of them sport a white chest blaze.