Yesterday, the Bear Center staff got all four bears on the scale—Ted 683 pounds, Honey 492, Lucky 454, and Holly 157 to start off the contests for guessing their denning weights and denning dates.
To compare how Holly is doing, Sue looked up weights of yearling bears in fall in Lynn’s Isabella Study Area during 1969 to 1975. The heavier bears supplemented their diets at garbage dumps. The weights of 5 male yearlings ranged from 86 to 100 pounds (average 92.2), and the weights of 9 female yearlings ranged from 67 to 119 (average 83.7), making little Holly nearly twice the weight of wild yearlings.
To see what percentage of their weight the bears lost overwinter, we looked back to a compilation we did for the update of February 13, 2011, using data from the old days of tranquilizing and weighing. Overwinter percent weight loss was 27.1% for yearlings, 22.5% for 2-3-year-olds, 36.7% for lactating females, 22.3% for non-lactating females, and 20.4% for adult males. The percentages reflect body size except for lactating mothers. Yearlings have the biggest surface to mass ratio, so they lost over 27%. Adult males had the biggest bodies and therefore the smallest surface to mass ratios, and they lost only 20.4%. Adolescents and non-lactating females fell in between.
The link for guessing the weights of Ted, Honey, Lucky and Holly is http://apps.facebook.com/forumforpages/139730642706794/8e456027-cdd4-49e3-bb70-76eea2fffa75/0
The link for guessing their denning dates is http://apps.facebook.com/forumforpages/139730642706794/4fc32f1f-e6df-4b05-a813-a55958a3da85/0
This rainy day was a day of meetings about the Northwoods Ecology Hall.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center