Ursus
gregladen | April 29, 2012For the second time in six months, a wild black bear was found wandering around deep in the urban zone in Saint Paul. I'm not sure what happened to the last one, but this one was killed by Saint Paul police under advisement of the Department of Natural Resources. To give you an idea of the location, here's a view of the cities with the bear marked:
This image represent an area that is approximately five miles across.
There are a lot of bears in Minnesota, but it is a little surprising to see one get this far into the city. It could have come down train tracks and/or via any of several…
gregladen | November 27, 2011Why would you want a field guide to all of the carninvores? They live everywhere, so there is no reason to carry around a field identification guide with ALL of them unless you were going everywhere in the whole world on one trip!
Yet, there is such a field guide, Carnivores of the World (Princeton Field Guides), and the truth is, this is ONE OF THE COOLEST BOOKS I'VE EVER SEEN! All the carnivores (almost) in one book. Interestingly, it turns out to be possible. There are fewer than three hundred species of terrestrial carnivore in the whole world, and that is fittable in a single book…
gregladen | September 27, 2011Animals eating1 people has always been an interest of mine, and bear attacks are among my favorite. As you know, I've got a few of my own stories, though I don 't know if I ever told this one. There were two of us canoe-camping in a state park in the Adirondacks. You had to park your car at a ranger station, sign in, get a canoe, and paddle across the lake to a distant spot. Turns out, I left the lights on in the car during that first part. This will become important in a moment.
So, I'm sitting there in front of a little camp fire cooking up some stew. To my right is a bag of food…
gregladen | March 20, 2011Cuddly Cub Polar Bear Knut has died unexpectedly, at the age of four. The cause of death is unknown but speculation abounds.
In memoriam, please remain silent for a moment while we play the Knut Song:
Here is the last video of him, showing his death. This is a bit gruesome. Perhaps, if you know your comparative medicine, you can suggest a possible cause:
It is typical for captive polar bears to live much longer than four years old. The oldest ever in captivity may have been Debby who lived in a zoo in Winnipeg to the age of 42, although there are different opinions on that. More…
gregladen | August 4, 2010Park mangers say they euthanized "an aggressive, habituated, and human-food-conditioned black bear" Tuesday out of "concern for visitor safety."
But it was also a result of stupid people making unnatural food available to the bear.
The adult female bear had been seen frequenting the Slough Creek area in the park's north central area. The bear was 4 - 5 years old and weighed between 100 and 125 pounds. Some observers had mistaken her for a grizzly since it was brown in color.
In mid-July, the bear entered an occupied backcountry campsite in the Slough Creek drainage. Attempts to chase her away…
gregladen | July 29, 2010As you know, I have a long standing interest in dogs and bears and in the topic of animals eating people.
(SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST)
And now, from Montana, we have a case of a brown bear with cubs invading a camp ground, killing one person and mauling several over several minutes time. The rangers say it was a predatory attack, but the m.o. does not seem that way to me. Yet, it is also not a case of a bear going after badly stored food or being territorially threatened by humans in any direct way (but perhaps indirectly?).
When he heard the first scream in a campground outside…
gregladen | November 6, 2008
This is from Seabeck, Washington, across the water from Seattle.
Ursus americanus is one of those species with a LOT of variation in adult body size. Males can run from 46 to 409 kg (100 - 900 lbs) [ADW], with the average around 100 - 120 kilos. Record size black bears include:
North Carolina, shot, November 1998, 880 lbs (399 kg)
Winnipeg, road kill, 2001, 856.5 lbs but estimated to have been 886 (402 kg) in life.
[source: American Bear Association]
Keep in mind that this was a black bear, not a brown bear. There are three kinds of bear in North America: Brown bear (also known as…
laelaps | November 2, 2007
Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) have always been favorite animals at zoos and aquariums, but the current problem of anthropogenic global climate change has popularized them further by making them extinction's poster species. While many documentaries show the loss of ice as one of the primary factors that is threatening the bears, the overall rise in temperatures is having a more subtle (but widespread) impact on the unevenly distributed populations of bears. Polar bears have adapted to cold climate so effectively that they do not do well when temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and…