Hope appropriately made herself the focus of attention on her 14-month birthday. She spent a lot of time totally discombobulating the camera, making us come out to see her. There are so many things we’ve learned from her. Here are a few.
Back when Lily abandoned Hope, we wondered why. We heard many theories. All were common but untested ideas. The only way to test them was to give Hope a helping hand and see what happened.
- An idea we saw in a newspaper, quoting a biologist, was that the separation was nothing remarkable because many biologists know that young bears sometimes have cubs before they’re supposed to and don’t yet know how to take care of them.
- Another idea was that Lily realized she was wasting time on one cub when she could abandon Hope and have a bigger litter the next year.
- Still another idea was that Lily knew Hope was defective and didn’t want to invest more time in her.
- Lastly, some thought Lily would reject or kill Hope if she saw her again.
Lily and Hope proved all of the above wrong. When Lily and Hope were reunited, they greeted each other with vocalizations and body language that showed strong emotion. They spent the next several days playing and nursing. But then Lily went off again. Would she forget Hope and vice versa? They found each other and Lily became the consummate mother, giving up food to Hope, playing with her, protecting her, and resuming nursing. Hope is still thriving at 14 months. As for the first theory, we don’t know how many biologists could know that 3 years old is too young for a bear to have a cub when that is the most common age that bears have their first litters in food-rich Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and they do just fine. Hope showed us how she lived, her relationship with Lily after re-uniting, and her relationship with the new cubs this winter. We think she has another 14 to 15 months with this family to show us a lot more before she is on her own. And when she is on her own we will continue to learn from her.
Lily was a dear at the den. She’d heard our greeting, emerged calmly, and was her trusting self. At least until we started behaving in ways she didn’t understand. We knew that moving the tube would make her nervous. It always does. That brought out a little bluster as she conveyed her feelings. She was fine, though. We thought the power screw driver, being new, might scare her, but we were wrong. She sat down and watched. Moving the pipe back into position set her off again. We considered adjusting the camera further, when we heard there were problems. We asked Lily what she thought. She made a face that said she’d rather we didn’t today. So we’ll give her a day or two to digest and habituate to the new activity and then we’ll adjust the camera again. Both Lily and Hope were super. We never heard a peep from the cubs, and we were too focused on fixing the den cam to remember to click a picture in the den.
Today was also a day of sorting your great comments on the petition. For a starter, here are comments from 38 educators in Minnesota http://www.bear.org/website/images/stories/Documents/Petition_Support_from_Minnesota_Educators.pdf and 175 educators out of state http://www.bear.org/website/images/stories/Documents/Petition_Support_from_Out-of-State_Educators.pdf, including a few from students. The petition comments are a gold mine for showing what these bears mean to many people.
You registered over 11,600 votes today to hold 6th place for Ely in the Reader’s Digest contest. Here’s the link to vote 10 times a day http://wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com/town.jsp?town=ELY&state=MN.
Two priceless videos of today's den doings will be posted by 'bearstudy' on YouTube. The first is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVRiHZKmFm8. Be sure to check back later for the second!
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center