Dot on the moveThe pictures we couldn’t include last night show what happened with Jewel, Dot, and the dark, handsome stranger—at least a stranger to us. One of the pictures shows the male attending to Jewel who is lying down in the forest. Another shows the male mounting Jewel with Dot less than 5 feet away. She is the dark shape face to face with Jewel.
Dot, male (scenting), and JewelThe picture of the male sitting shows him with his mouth partially open and his nose tilted up doing flehmen, which is behavior lingo for using the vomeronasal organ (VMO) in the roof of his mouth to better sense molecules of the size associated with sexual odors. The VMO is used to assess sexual readiness. Although its function is like the nose in that it assesses odors, it is served by a different nerve, the trigeminal nerve, and takes the information to a different part of the brain. When he did the flehmen reaction, he had just dismounted from Jewel. He evidently caught scent of something he wanted to investigate more closely using the VMO.
Male sniffing and lickingThe interesting odor turned out to be right next to him on the road where the bears had passed earlier. He immediately turned to sniffing and licking the ground in a small spot for well over a minute as is shown in the next picture. It’s likely that one of the females earlier dribbled urine there. Female urine is one of main substances that stimulate the flehmen reaction during mating season.
Male mounts JewelOne thing interesting throughout the observations was how little attention the male paid to the observer. A popular misconception is that male bears will attack people as competitors during mating season. In our decades of walking with bears, we have been impressed with two things: (1) how bold the males can be in ignoring a person to be with an estrus female, and (2) that no male, black or grizzly, has challenged any of us. Their boldness may make people think bears are about to attack, thereby keeping the folklore alive. Fear of attack is all in the perception, not in the facts, of such encounters. We know a biologist who likes to tell a story about how threatened he felt when a male looked at him and clacked his teeth when the biologist was near an estrus female the bear wanted to be near. Actually, clacking teeth means the bear was scared, not that it was about to attack.
Male and JewelMany stories come to mind to tell here to refute the misconception; but just in the last few days, there were several examples. One is the male with Dot a week ago. People scarcely deterred him from approaching Dot.
The male in these pictures with Dot and Jewel did little more than glance at the observer edging close enough to get a picture through the brushy forest understory (as the picture shows).
Tonight, Dot and Jewel have gone their separate ways and are 9.5 and 4.5 miles away from where these pictures were taken.
Lynn remembers walking with an estrus female at night in the 1980’s and having a strange big male silently cut in front of him and take over the female.
Charlie RussellMark your calendars: Charlie Russell—renowned for his groundbreaking work with grizzly/brown bears in Kamchatka and Canada is coming to Ely! He will present a show about his life's work at the Vermilion Community College Theater on Friday, June 28, 2013 at 7:30 PM. We expect this event to sell out, so get your tickets early at http://nabc.eventbrite.com.
A video of Lily from June 3 is posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x6R-puWl88.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
All photos taken today unless otherwise noted.