Lily gives birth to one cub! - UPDATE January 22, 2010
January 22, 2010 - 8:47 PM CST
The long wait is over. When labor started at 1:59 PM CST yesterday, we thought it would be short. Cubs average only ¾ pound and 9 inches long. How long could that take? Along with thousands of you, we spent a sleepless night as bouts of labor continued for 21 hours and 39 minutes. Finally, at 11:38 AM CST, Lily made some contortions, looked under her, and began the intense sweet motherly grunts that bears only make to cubs. Could it be? A loud squawk from the cub made it definite. Lily tucked her head under her chest to care for the cub and breathe on it.
A few minutes later there were more contortions. This time it was only the afterbirth. As Lily rose up to eat the afterbirth, she let cold air under her, making the cub squawk and making people wonder if it was a second cub. First litters are typically 1 or 2. We listened long and hard today but never heard two cub voices.
Now at 8:23 PM, we think Lily is done. She had a single cub. She is now breathing a relaxed three breaths per minute instead of the four per minute prior to birth. We don't see her muscles contracting like in the past couple days. Her restlessness is gone. However, just after 5 PM, Lily made a few motions reminiscent of last night. If another cub is coming, which we doubt, we’ll need the help of your eyes and ears to determine when it arrives. We can’t stay up another night.
Sharing these discoveries with thousands of people like this is a highlight of our careers. It’s a purpose of the North American Bear Center. 50 exhibits of Lily and other wild bears show some of the most interesting behaviors we have witnessed. Snippets of some of those are on bear.org.
Watching the donation thermometer rise, we are thankful to all of you who share our passion to let people know about bears. People will not coexist with animals they fear. No one can replace misconceptions with facts about bears better than the bears themselves, and that’s where Lily comes in. We're looking forward to watching how Lily cares for this cub as it grows to as much as 9 pounds by mid-April—nearly twice the weight of cubs in multi-cub litters. We have never studied the relationship between a mother and a single cub to see how it might differ from the relationships between mothers and multiple cubs. We're looking forward to seeing how that relationship develops.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center