Lily and Hope discovered the microphone tube buried in snow under the camera tube. First Hope pulled off the foamy wind cover and brought that into the den. She and Lily played ‘take away’ with the foam until Hope returned to work on the mic tube while Lily shredded the foam. Hope managed to dislodge the tube and pull it into the den for great close-up sounds of the cubs nursing. We think (and hope…) the microphone is still in the tube. Watching them manipulate it, we wondered when the sound would go dead. We were relieved when they turned to chewing on vegetation and playing with each other and ignoring the microphone.
Are the cubs getting playful? Some of the pawing motions almost looked playful today. Is this the age when play begins? At 53 days? Or are we trying too hard to see play? Check the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT2uk1F6Zbc. The top expert cub-watchers in the world are Lily fans. Two more videos will be posted to the 'bearstudy' YouTube account later tonight.
We’re watching the cubs’ motor skills improve. In a week, they’ll be as old as Hope was when she first toddled out of the den on March 21st. Her next venture like that wasn’t until March 29. On March 30 she was practicing climbing trees, and on April 1 they left the den for good.
That means we’re thinking about putting a radio-collar on Lily again. A crust on the snow could make tracking impossible should they leave earlier than expected.
Another peer-reviewed paper will be on the protozoan parasite that killed Juliet’s cub Mimi in 2008 as seen in Bearwalker of the Northwoods. The fact that we could walk with Juliet made that find possible. On the afternoon of the death, the sick cub went off alone and disappeared. Juliet was left with one cub. That’s all that would be known in most cases. But we walked with Juliet and she revealed Mimi’s location when she checked on her. We never would have found her curled up in a small cavity under some roots as shown in the documentary. A few hours later she was dead.
We immediately took her to the home of local veterinarian Larry Anderson and set about preserving tissue samples for laboratory tests. Larry said the liver looked odd. Laboratory tests showed the culprit to be sarcocystosis. A literature search showed that 2 captive bears have died of it, and mild infections were found in 5 of 506 wild bears biopsied in Pennsylvania and Florida. Mimi was the first case in Minnesota, the first known death from it in the wild, and the first reported death of a cub from it. We don’t know how or when Mimi picked up the parasite.
Julia Atwood and Sue Gottscho analyzed the petition you worked so hard on. The final was 27,623 signatures (way to go!) with 607 signatures from hunters wanting radio-collars protected. And that was only those hunters who self-identified in their comments. Yes, Julia and Sue G read all the comments – amazing dedication!
Thank you for all you are doing.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center