Lily and Faith play - Feb 13, 2012We remembered the frequent play in the den last year between Lily and Hope and between Hope and the cubs. We wondered if that was the norm or was the play unusual because of the mixed-litter. We wondered if other bears play in their dens. Today, Lily and Faith played. Does that mean their bond is strengthening after a winter of suckling and grooming? We’ll continue to watch and wonder as the Den-Watch Team records it all for the eventual publication.
A video of Lily and Faith playing is posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqdA0NyGaWQ.
Lily looks out of den - Feb 13, 2012Ted and Lucky denning together last winter and Honey and Lucky this winter made us look through the bear literature for similar instances in the wild. Very few.
Jewel - Feb 13, 2012In our 42 years of visiting dens, we remember Old Mother D breaking up with her yearlings as usual, reuniting with them after a fruitless mating season, then denning with them that winter as reported on page 39 of “Effects of food supply and kinship on social behavior, movements, and population growth of black bears in northeastern Minnesota.” The entire 72-page monograph is available on www.bearstudy.org under Publications/Published Papers/Black Bear, then scroll down to Publication Number 54.
Jewel and cub - Feb 13, 2012Our old friend Chuck Schwartz, working for years in Alaska, reported the most cases of unusual liaisons in dens. He saw 3 cases where mothers denned with their yearlings (that would turn 2 in the den) like we saw with Old Mother D.
In another case Chuck saw, a mother let her 3-year-old daughter from a previous litter join her and her yearling daughter in a den. The 3-year-old gave birth to cubs in the crowded den, but they didn’t survive.
Jewel tends a cub - Feb 13, 2012At least the above den-sharing was within families. Chuck saw the one reported case where they weren’t. A yearling female, apparently on her own for some reason, denned with an unrelated mother and cub.
There is one more. This one reminds us of Honey and Lucky. Back in 1988, we heard from John Goodrich who was studying bears in the Great Basin in Nevada. He had found an adult male and an adult female denning together. He didn’t say whether they were getting along or not. They had separate beds 32 inches apart, something like Honey and Lucky.
A major “Thank You” to the Lily fans who came up with “Valentines for Shadow’s Clan” (http://givemn.razoo.com/story/Valentinesforshadowsclan) to raise money for radio-collars! And the card you get for donating is beautiful!! It has the faces and names of all 14 radio-collared bears around the perimeter of the Valentine heart. Super.
Thank you for all you are doing.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center