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These shaggy-haired bears can be heard sucking up termites a long distance away. Sloth bears are stocky with long, shaggy, black hair and a white U- or Y-shaped marking on the chest. They have large lips, a long tongue, a pale muzzle and well-developed hook-like claws that enable them to climb trees and dig for termites. Sloth bears are nocturnal and occupy home ranges that they seem happy to share with other sloth bears. Male sloth bears have an average range of 13 square km.
This is much smaller than most other bears, probably due to the fact that they do not suffer from seasonal fluctuations of food supply ants and termites are available all year round.
The constant availability of ants and termites also mean that they do not need to undergo a winter sleep. They are the smallest species of bear. They have strong paws with naked soles and long sickle-shaped claws. They have flexible snouts and very long tongues, which are an adaptation for extracting termites from nests. Relatively to their size , they have the largest canines of all the bear species. Canine teeth are specialised for tearing meat, but sun bears are not particularly carnivorous.
They may use their sharp canines as weapons or as tools for tearing at trees to get at insects. Black bears are largely solitary creatures, except when breeding. They build dens beneath fallen trees, hollowed logs, and other protective shelters.
They are diurnal active during the day in natural habitats, although they may become more active at night in areas with lots of human activity to avoid encounters with us. Still, be sure to keep your eyes peeled! During the fall, these bears will build up a thick layer of fat to sustain them through their winter sleep; however, they do not truly hibernate!
Instead, black bears like other large mammals enter a shallow torpor. In torpor, bears do not need to wake to eat, drink, urinate, or defecate, although this state does allow bears to wake up more suddenly if a sense of danger is present. Black bears mate in summer every two to three years. Females give birth while in their dens to anywhere between one and six cubs in mid-winter two or three are most common!
The spring represents a period of food stress, as most bears emerge from the den. Black bears breed from May through August, with most breeding activity peaking in June and July. Throughout the summer, males travel over large areas to enhance their chances for encountering mates. Although males become sexually mature at years of age, most do not participate in breeding until they have reached full adult size, at about years in Maine.
Female bears in Maine become sexually mature at years of age. Although black bears breed in the summer, fetal development is delayed until early winter, after the female has entered a den. In January and February, female bears give birth to cubs inside the winter den.
If a female is unable to store sufficient body fat prior to entering the den, the pregnancy is terminated. Cubs weigh about 12 ounces at birth, and depend on their mother for warmth and nutrition during the remainder of the winter. They grow to pounds by mid-late April, when the mother leads them away from the den.
Because cubs remain with their mother for months, female bears do not breed in the summer following the birth of their cubs. Cubs enter dens with their mother the following fall. When they emerge from their winter den as yearling bears, they remain with their mother until she goes into estrus in the spring. This long period of parental care leads to females bears producing litters every other year. When beechnuts were the primary fall food for bears in northern Maine, most cubs were born in odd-numbered years in response to alternating years of high beechnut crops.
More recently, cubs are born in both years in northern Maine, following several years of lower but consistent beechnut crops. Cub production has been more consistent in central Maine, where more stable fall food supplies result in nearly half of adult females giving birth each year. Bears are long-lived animals, capable of surviving 30 years in the wild. Their survival increases as they mature.
Less than half of newborn cubs may die before reaching their first birthday, with starvation being a major cause of death. Black bears lead solitary lives, except for breeding pairs, family groups comprised of adult females and their offspring, and occasional aggregations at concentrated food sources. Females use areas of miles squared in Maine. Although, female bears remain within or near the range of their mother their entire life, male bears disperse long distances often up to miles as subadults years of age prior to settling into adult ranges that may exceed miles squared.
Bears often make trips up to 40 miles outside of their ranges to feed on berries or nuts or occasionally to an orchard or field of oats or corn in late summer or fall.
When feeding on a concentrated food source, bears may use areas as small as several acres; when searching for dispersed food or mates, they can cover several miles in a day. Bears are active in late fall as long as food is plentiful.
In years when fall foods are abundant, bears will feed until snow makes travel difficult, and normally enter dens in late November.
If late fall food is scarce, bears usually enter dens in October. The Doorway to Hell. Roadside Geology Guides. Land Below Sea Level.
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Baby black bears, called cubs, weigh just 7 to 11 ounces to grams at birth, according to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum opens in new tab. Black bear cubs stay in the den with their mothers until spring. The cubs are weaned before they reach 8 months old, but they won’t leave their mothers until they are about 17 months old, after hibernating with her during their second winter, according to ADW. Black bears can live more than 30 years in the wild. However, most black bears only live to be about 10 years old and die well short of their maximum lifespan, according to ADW.
The main causes of death for adult black bears are vehicle collisions, hunting and starvation due to a lack of available food, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. American black bears only live in North America. Black bears in Asia are called Asiatic black bears Ursus thibetanus , or moon bears, and are a separate species from American black bears.
Source: ITIS. For example, there are Florida black bears Ursus americanus floridanus and California black bears Ursus americanus californiensis , although these bears are not just confined to these states. Cinnamon bears Ursus americanus cinnamomum get their name because they often have cinnamon-colored coats.
Kermode bears Ursus americanus kermodei are a subspecies of black bear in British Columbia, Canada that are sometimes white. White Kermode bears are also known as spirit bears, although they are part of the Kermode population and are not a separate subspecies. The highest concentration of spirit bears is found on Gribbell Island, off the north coast of British Columbia, where one-third of the black bears on the island are born white, according to The National Wildlife Federation opens in new tab.
Natural history.
› articles › american-black-bear. Black bears can be found as far south as central Mexico and as far north as northern Alaska and most of Canada. In the United States black bears are common in.