Hope, Juliet, and Embarrassment
June 28, 2010 – 9:54 PM CDT
Hope’s radio-collar showed us one of her hangouts this morning—and it makes us wonder how a little cub like this knows. She was near the tip of a peninsula—almost an island, out of the usual bear traffic. She was looking down from a broad crotch 50 feet up a big white pine. She stretched and scratched, looked awhile, and eventually came down for her food. This evening, she was on the same peninsula but was at another white pine where she and Lily had bedded. Little Hope apparently retained a lot of information from her time with Lily. The fact that Hope is using some of the same trees Lily used might increase the chance of them meeting up, although Lily is not seeking the same kind of security for her resting spots that little Hope is. So Lily is not retreating to the tips of peninsulas and using secure white pines like Hope is. After eating, Hope played with sticks and bark at the base of her white pine (picture right). She looked relaxed but was totally attentive to any unidentified sound. A hummingbird hovered near, and the whir of the wings put her on full alert.
The radio-collaring last night took time. Hope was defensive. She is developing trust more slowly than most bears we’ve met. It could be her unusual circumstance, but we think it is also her personality. She seemed more defensive and less trusting than usual even when she was with Lily. There are too many factors to figure it out easily.
This afternoon, we visited Juliet and her 3 cubs and soon realized we’d have to make an embarrassing admission. One is a male. We must have gotten them mixed up going backward and forward on the video. So there’s a Boy Named Sue. It’s Sharon, Shirley, and the Boy Named Sue. We’ll probably call him Boy for short. Someday there will be a female named just plain Sue. Juliet’s cubs are doing well, but we think Hope is larger. We wish we could see them side by side.
We asked a lactation expert what she thought might be involved hormonally in Lily and Hope separating. She and we wondered if one cub might not stimulate enough oxytocin and prolactin for full feelings of motherhood. We’ll come back to that subject after we look at more data from the 44 years of study. We are also considering Lily’s young age (3), but 3 is the most common age for black bears to produce their first cubs in Pennsylvania and New Jersey where there is top bear habitat. There are no absolutes. What we are seeing in our data is a lot of variability surrounding any behavior we have tried to assess. We think of behaviors as falling under a bell-shaped curve. Most fall near the middle, but if you get a big enough sample size, there are some out in the tails doing things a little different. We know several females that raised single cubs just fine, but there can be exceptions. RC gave birth to a single cub as a 4-year-old and lost it in May. Cookie gave birth to a single cub as a 3-year-old and abandoned it in August—too late to mate again. And then there was Lily. When we saw her yesterday we asked her how she could do such a thing. She didn’t answer. She just got up and walked away. We’ll have to figure it out on our own. More to come.
Thank you again for your support for our research and education.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center