There are changes happening in the animal world that are not usual. Last week I remember reading an article that some bears are not hibernating or their hibernation time Is shorter. He's an article I just found about it: GENOA, Nev. — There are certain axioms about the natural world we learn as children. The sea is salty. Plants grow toward light. Bears hibernate in winter. But as climate change leads to warmer winters, later falls and earlier springs — which can disrupt both food supplies and biological rhythms — American black bears are changing their hibernation routines, scientists say. In some cases, bears are not hibernating at all, staying awake all winter. In others, bears are waking from their slumber too early. For every one degree Celsius that minimum temperatures increase in winter, bears hibernate for six fewer days, a study found last fall. As global temperatures continue to rise, by the middle of the century black bears may stay awake between 15 and 39 more days per year, the study said.
Yup. And there have always been places where black bears have never hibernated in recent history...they may take long naps and their metabolism might slow, but they never have gone into torpor. Between me and the Atlantic shore is one such region.
I don't know much about brown bears but black bears don't hibernate in the sense of sleeping all winter. They minimize their calorie demand in the winter because food isn't readily available, given that about 85% of their normal diet consists of vegetable matter and insects. However, the females often nurse cubs during the winter, and, on warmer days, they'll walk around some. Of course, the colder and harsher the winter, the less active they'll be. So yeah, black bears in warmer climates are more active in the winter but even the ones in Maine aren't dormant all winter. They're more active during warm winters, and more dormant during the cold winters. Winters have always fluctuated widely. I can remember winters when we didn't have snow on the ground by Christmas, and other winters when it snowed in August.
I'll paste the content of this short article that says black bears DO hibernate...but the articles I see say "It depends on how you define that word." From this article, it seems that black bears can remain inactive for over 7 months, but they do not lower their body temp (like other hibernating mammals) in order to do so. ***************************************** When people defined hibernation simply in terms of temperature reduction, bears were not considered hibernators. However, when biologists discovered the many metabolic changes that let black and grizzly bears hibernate up to 7 ½ months without eating, drinking, urinating, or defecating, they realized that body temperature was only a small part of hibernation. They redefined mammalian hibernation as a specialized, seasonal reduction in metabolism concurrent with scarce food and cold weather (Watts et al. 1981). Black bears are now considered highly efficient hibernators. Hibernators the size of chipmunks hibernate differently. They lower body temperature to near freezing but wake up every few days to raise body temperature to near normal, eat stored food, and eliminate body wastes. Then they lower body temperature and repeat the cycle. The confusion about what to call black bear hibernation is a matter of definition. Further confusion has arisen because it differs with region and fatness (see other exhibits). People have called black and grizzly bear hibernation torpor, winter sleep, dormancy, and carnivorean lethargy. The leading physiologists now simply call it hibernation. *****************************************
If you raised your sons in Alaska, that makes sense. Brown bears are more aggressive than black bears. I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and although we had plenty of black bears (if you see a black bear once in a while, there are probably plenty of them around), we seldom thought of them. Even as relatively young children, we camped in the woods, and worrying about being attacked by a bear never crossed my mind. If we were going to be camping in the same place for a few days, we'd hang our food, but the concern was about having it stolen by bears, raccoons, or other critters, and when we built camps in the woods, we wouldn't leave food there, but for the same reasons. We knew the bears were there, and we knew they'd likely break down the door of our camp to get any food we had there, but while there was respect, we didn't worry about being eaten by a bear.
The danger from bears-either variety--is in the spring when there are young. If you accidentally get between a mother and her cubs, look out. Black bears are always concerned with food, and, like you @Ken Anderson, the biggest issue is to keep your food out of reach and secure enough that it won't draw them in. Most encounters with brown bears are while hunting and fishing. Kodiak bears have realized that a gun shot is an invitation to dinner. There are Blacktail deer on the island that are huntable and a limited number of tags are available for the bears. Since there are many times the number of deer tags vs. bear tags, the bears will simply be drawn to the kill after a gunshot and will take the deer carcass away form the hunter. Sometimes when hunting moose, the moose call will call in a brownie instead and the encounters often turn out poorly for the hunters. There is fishing, of course, when the fisherpeople are mixed with the bears and, as long as nobody interferes with the bears fishing, all is well but it is advised to carry a powerful handgun to save your life just in case. The extent people go to to defend their cabins include bear "welcome mats" which are sheets of plywood with nails driven through them place at thee doors and windows with the nail points upward. It doesn't always work, but folks think it discourages the bears from breaking in.
For all I post about there being so few black bear encounters... 3-year-old attacked by bear after family leaves unsecured food items in campsite Tuesday Aug 13, 2024 This happened in Red Lodge, Montana at 10PM at a private campsite. They left garbage and food unsecured at the campsite and in the tent. The child was in the tent when the encounter occurred, and as of the writing of the article, has survived the attack. The sub-adult female black bear--who had no prior issues--was trapped and euthanized.
There is also the myth that wolves don't attack people. People have feared wolves for millennia for a reason--they do kill people. There have been several witnessed wolf attacks here, especially upon children and the elderly. I think the myth was made possible because wolves leave no trace unlike other predators. Cats will stash the kill and return to it later; bears do the same. A wolf pack, however, since there can be 15 or more animals in the pack, will eat everything including bones and even clothing sometimes, thus leaving no evidence of the attack. We have dozens of people who disappear up here every year, and it is my belief that some, if not most, are the result of wolf attacks. Of course, there are many other causes of disappearances including falling through river ice or down crevasses, but I never discount wolves.