What is hibernation? When do bears and other animals go to sleep? Some details of a bear's life. What does a bear do when it leaves hibernation.

V. NIKOLAENKO.

"Taking pictures of bears is a very dangerous occupation. I’ve been renting them for 30 years. Over time, there has been much less courage, experience. But no experience guarantees security." These are the words of Vitaliy Aleksandrovich Nikolayenko, a wonderful researcher of nature, who devoted his life to photographing and studying Kamchatka bears. It so happened that his article "Hello, Bear! How are you?" (Science and Life, No. 12, 2003) was the last lifetime publication. At the end of December 2003, Vitaliy Aleksandrovich monitored a bear that did not lie in the den. Leaving his backpack and skis, he walked along the animal tracks, apparently hoping to take some pictures. But it is impossible to predict the behavior of even the familiar bear - Nikolaenko himself spoke about this. And he already had collisions with bears, fraught with serious danger. The last meeting with the stranger ended tragically ... In memory of Vitaly Aleksandrovich Nikolaenko, we publish notes that are not included in the previous article.

Science and life // Illustrations

Vitaly Alexandrovich Nikolaenko.

During fishing, the bear quenches thirst, deeply plunging the muzzle into the water.

A bear comes to the river not only for fish, but also to take a bath.

The bear arranges lying in the snow, warming them with branches or birch dust.

After exiting the den, the cubs like to lie on the snow.

Family of yearlings.

BERLOGI

The den is a winter shelter of the beast, which provides optimal microclimatic conditions that allow you to survive a long period of adverse food and weather conditions with minimal energy resources. For females, it also serves as a maternity hospital, and for newborns, it is a manger.

The forty lairs that I managed to find and describe were unpaved. Hunters from the south of the Kamchatka Peninsula talk about lairs that are in rocky caves, but there is no reliable data on this. I myself discovered only one uncovered den among volcanic blocks, on the shores of Lake Kuril. Through a narrow hole of a triangular shape, the beast penetrated into the furrow chamber, formed by the flat sides of the blocks. The den was 2.5 m long, and volcanic slag covered its bottom. At the far end is a shallow bed. Two dark spots on the back wall testified that bears have been using this den for more than a dozen years.

Females with yearlings (first-year-olds) and young individuals are the first to fall into wintering. Mass departure to the dens takes place from mid-October. The animals spend two to three weeks at the den and lie in them at the beginning and middle of November. For some time they can still get out of the den, lie nearby during the day, and hide inside at night. Bears do not dig a lair in advance. The stories that the bear, going to the den, tangles up the tracks, winds around, are hunters' fantasies. Observations showed that the bears really loop in alder trees during this period, avoid open places and actively mark trees in places of rest. But looping is nothing more than a reaction to an unconscious uncomfortable mental state that prompts the bear to seek reliable shelter. The bear knows the habitat well and, leaving the spawning grounds on the den, he finds two or three old dens, sometimes already occupied by other bears. I have never had to watch a bear dispute the right to a busy den.

Most dens are in thickets of alder dwarf, on the slopes of ridges and ravines, along the dry channels of streams. In shape, they can be divided into three groups. The first ones are pear-shaped, with a well-pronounced elongated hole between the brow (the hole of the den) and the birch chamber, with a lying near the back wall. The second - spherical or ovoid, without an oblong hole; their height, width and length are not very different in size, and the deepening of the bed is a continuation of the walls of the den. Still others have a turtle shape, with a flat oval bottom; their length is 1.5-2 times greater than the width, the top is hemispherical, stretched on the sides, the height reaches 100-130 cm, and the width in the center is almost 2 times greater than the height. The bed is located at the back wall of the den and is its continuation. All dens have flatter posterior walls than lateral ones.

The most durable dens are located under the rhizomes of birches. Their roof rests on roots that have grown in breadth. As a rule, such lairs have been used for decades by family groups and dominant males.

If the bear does not find the finished den, he builds a new one. The bear digs the den with both forepaws. A slight shift of the furrow chamber to the left or right side depends on which paw the beast works best with, left or right. The soil is thrown out of the den between the hind legs or sideways. How he manages to rake up to ten cubic meters of land through a narrow hole remains a mystery. He crawls into the den in a plastunsky way, on his elbows, stretching out his hind legs, and gets out of it in the same way, crawling. The beast measures the volume of the den with the size of its body. Its length and width should be no less than the length of the body, and its height should be slightly greater than the height of the body at the withers so that, sitting in a prone position, the beast does not rest its head on the ceiling. Digging a den takes two to three days. Thick rhizomes that interfere with the passage, the bear gnaws and throws out. Several fragments of rhizomes may remain in the den.

WINTER DREAM AND AWAKENING

The bear’s life in the den is supported by the nutrition of fat reserves accumulated in the fall. The processes that occur in a sleeping bear are similar to the processes that occur in the body of a starving person, but in a bear they are much more rational. Despite the long immobility in the den, the strength of the bones does not decrease. The cells of the bear’s brain during winter sleep are in oxygen starvation mode for five months, but do not die, although the blood enters the brain 90% less than usual.

Scientists suggest that the process of obesity and moderate weight loss in bears is controlled by a special hormone that comes from the hypothalamus every fall. After hibernation, the bear retains its muscles completely and does not feel hunger for another two weeks. This explains his playful mood after leaving the den and aimless vagrancy in the area of \u200b\u200bhabitat.

In Kamchatka, bears leave the den from the third decade of March until the end of the first decade of June. As a rule, large males of mature and middle age leave the den first. Then a mass exit begins, and together with the males, single females and young females of the first wedding spring, family groups of fours (three-year-olds), tretiaks (two-year-olds) and second-year (year-olds) rise. The last of the family groups are the lairs of the female with yearlings.

Bears leave the den for snow, and in the spring air - during the day the temperature is up to + 4 ° С, at night frosts up to _6 ° С. Snow is slowly moistened, compacted, structured. After leaving the den, the beast is next to it, if no one interferes with it, for several more days, and at night it can return to the den. The first lodges, as a rule, are located two to three meters from the brow, then the beast begins to move 50-100 m away. During the day, under the sun, it lies in the open snow, does not return to the den for the night, but settles in the snow. He makes a litter, crushing the tops of alder or cedar branches melted out of the snow, or rips off the bark from a tree, under which he rests, or carries dry stump into chips and sleeps on its rotten fragments.

After three to five days, the bear leaves the den. Studying the tracks suggests that in the first two to three days the beast lacks purposeful movements. It is like walking freely for the pleasure of moving. Contrary to the general idea that the movement should be directed to the location of the food, the animals roam quite randomly. Their traces are found in the middle mountains, and on the slopes of hills, up to 1000 m and above sea level, and in the coastal forest zone, and along the ocean. In the area of \u200b\u200bthe birch forest, the bear, idly moving, destroys three or four dry trees on two or three kilometers, but not for warming the bed, but for game fun, from an excess of strength and desire to move. The need for a game in the afterbirth period is higher than in other periods. Free vagrancy is ordered by the end of May, and animals gradually focus on the first thawed areas with grass seedlings, on the sunny slopes of ravines, on the banks of ice-free rivers and streams, and those who have reached the sea coast - on the ocean coastline.

The early spring period of nutrition begins, scarce in quantity of food, "hungry", in our opinion, but in fact - completely normal for the beast. The secret to the so-called endogenous nutrition is the use of fat reserves accumulated since the fall, when the amount of consumed bait feed exceeded the daily norm by 3-4 times. The beast was compelled to eat up for the future on foodless winter and spring days, and even in the summer, since the nutritional value of grassy vegetation is low. By the end of the summer season, bears completely lose their fat reserves, and those who did not have enough of them begin to lose muscle mass.

SHOES

In the active period of the annual cycle, the bear uses sunbeds for resting at night or in the afternoon — holes in the ground (in spring, after leaving the den, the beds are made in the snow). In the summer, the bear digs storages in the ground or uses strangers. In the autumn, at the first frosts, soil lodges are warmed with a bed of dry grass stems. Such stays are called nesting. As the night temperature decreases, the amount of litter in the bed increases and the beds themselves look like huge nests on the ground. To collect the litter, the beast makes scratches with its claws, then with one or the other paw alternately, raking small heaps of dry grassy stems in one place. Then he moves one or two steps forward and again heaps the heaps. So the beast passes 5-10 m, then backs off, raking the heaps of stalks harvested under a roller. The roller rolls into a lying position and again begins to rake the heaps, moving forward. The stems of some herbs, such as reedweed, are very durable, and the bear does not always manage to scratch the desired bunch. Then he helps himself with his mouth: he tilts the stems to the side, bites them with his teeth, rakes them in a bundle and moves on. Rolling 20-30 rollers, he heaps the soil with a huge pile of dry grass, then climbs on top of it and rakes a hole in the center with a diameter of about a meter and a depth of up to 50 cm. At such a bed, sides are formed 1-1.5 m wide, sometimes up to 2-2.5 m. Bears obviously do not need sides of such a width. Apparently, when collecting building material, he does not commensurate its volume with his own body. Such a bed is used for several days - before rains or wet snowfalls; the bear leaves her as soon as the litter freezes. Such huge beds are made by only one large male on Lake Forest. The thickness of the litter at the bottom of the soil bed is compressed to 10-20 cm. In the nesting beds constructed in the autumn, the litter is different: from reed, sholomaynik, fallen leaves, destroyed dry stumps. When the grass leaves under the snow, the bear uses soil storages in the thicket of alder trees. He cleans them of snow and lays on a thin layer of peat humus.

In the spring, after leaving the den, the bear makes a litter from the branches of an alder or cedar dwarf, but more often uses dry trunks of birch trees, breaking them into chips and scraping out claws of dust from them. In the Valley of Geysers, bears adapted themselves to bask in early spring, during the night frosts, in beds lying dug in warm soil. In summer and early autumn, bears make opposite demands on stubs - they must not retain heat, but take away its excess, that is, be cool and moist. For this, the animals make them deeper and wider - up to 1.5 m in width and up to 0.5 m in depth. Such animals lie in damp places, not far from the water, in the dense tall grass shaded by trees, or in the curtains of the mountains, in damp ground.

Normal freshly excavated soil beds on average are 80–80–20 cm in size, rarely up to a meter wide. Over time, other bears expand and deepen them. The average width of such beds is from 100 to 120 cm, and the depth is 20-30 cm. The question arises: how can a beast up to two meters long with a huge body volume fit in such a small bed? He uses it only as a “chair” in which he places the back and part of his belly. And the upper half rests on the side of the bed.

WATER

A bear is inseparable from water. In summer, water, snowfields and wet soil are essential components of comfortable conditions. They perform a thermoregulatory function. In the area of \u200b\u200bhabitat, the beast knows all its baths. "Own" - incorrectly said. Baths in the form of small lakes, pits filled with water, streams and rivers are common to all bears. In summer or autumn, after a long grazing under the sun, the beast goes to a watering place and immediately immerses its body in the water to the ears. You can take a bath for 10-15 minutes, and then climb into the dense thickets of alder and relax in deep, damp beds.

All bears grazing in the summer on the grate meadows along the surf strip constantly swim in the ocean. They lie on the surf line, head to the shore, and lie for 10-20 minutes, washed by the incident waves. Then, moving back to 15-20 m, the animal digs a deep damp lying in the sand and lies in it for rest.

At the end of May, at a temperature of +5 to + 10 ° C, the bears lie in snowy beds for 5-6 hours, shifting from side to side. In the mountains in June-July, bears use both snowfields and streams for cooling. They do not visit warm mineral springs: warm water of a bear does not attract.

The bear does not drink sea water, although it can fish in it, opposite the mouth of spawning rivers, while some of the salt water falls into its mouth. But during spawning of capelin, the bear prefers to collect it, thrown out by the waves, on the shore.

If a bear stopped in the river while fishing and, having immersed its face in the water right up to its eyes, draws water into itself for 5-10 seconds, making five to seven intervals of 10-15 seconds, it means that it has finished fishing and will now go fishing recreation. After resting on the shore for about an hour, the bear again begins to feel thirsty. Even if the river is closer than a swampy puddle, he prefers to drink from a puddle. And if, after resting on the shore in the late autumn and winter, he goes to drink to the river, he tries not to go into the water, but to drink, falling to his knees, barely reaching the water with his muzzle. When it is too lazy to go to the river, it eats snow. Having drunk, he returns to his bed or can lie down right on the shore and watch the river, looking for fish with his eyes.

SNOW AND BEAR

A bear is born under the snow, leaves the den for snow, in some cases uses it in the summer and lies in the den under the snow of the new winter. In autumn, snow falls over berry tundra, cranberry marshes and cedar dwarf pine, completely depriving the bear of plant food.

Deep winter snows cover the den, insulate the ceiling and seal the brow. In the alder dwarf brow of the den most often overlaps branches bent under the weight of snow. Rumors that a bear plugs an inlet for winter with moss or dry grass from the inside is another common myth. There must be a hole in the thickness of the snow from the brow to the surface of the snow - it acts as a ventilation pipe for thermoregulation and gas exchange in the den.

Coming out of the den, the bear is in the snow, but not on the fluffy and loose that accompanied him to the den, but on a dense snowy infusion. The morning crust in late April - early May looks like white asphalt. The crust of soldered firn grains can reach a thickness of 5-10 cm. A man and a bear walk freely along such a crust. 2-3 hours after sunrise, the ice spikes are destroyed. The beast begins to fall through 10-30 cm, and sometimes along the belly. To save power, he prefers to move through the holes of his or others' tracks.

Paw Sucking

The sucking reflex in cubs torn from their mothers in the third or fourth month of life and growing up in a single family group is preserved until the age of three. The cubs suck each other’s hair on their back and sides with the same rumbling with which they suckle their mother’s breasts. Since they do not receive nutritional support, the process itself is important to them. Perhaps sucking wool is a factor in closer communication with each other and explains family affection before the family breaks up. The little bear, left alone, prompted by the instinct of sucking, carefully sucks the clawed fingers of its front paw. This continues until the age of three. From here, apparently, there is an opinion that the bear sucks its paw in the den.

CLOTH-SELF-ASSEMBLY

Bear "table" in the fall - like a tablecloth, self-assembled. Bear feast begins in August and ends in October. During this period, shiksha and blueberries ripen on the berry tundra, as well as honeysuckle, lingonberry, prince, juniper. On the tundra of the Tikhaya River, up to 25 bears gather at the same time with a 6 km 2 “table”. At the end of August, mountain ash ripens in the forest. In October, you can collect cranberries in the swamps. Fish enters the rivers. Bears meet her on the rifts, on the shallows, eat up in the first two weeks, and then eat only delicacies - caviar and brain cartilage. Having eaten fish, go "on berries", having eaten berries - go for fish. From the abundance of energy-intensive food they quickly grow fat.

At the end of October, the self-assembled tablecloth “fades”, the bears lose interest in it and, tired after six months of continuous “work”, migrate to rest. Ahead - again a dream in the den.

It is no secret that Siberian winter is not an easy test for many animals, and bears are no exception.

In vernacular it is said that the bear hibernates, biologists say - in a winter dream. Details about this interesting process are few. The main reason is the difficulty of collecting data.

Brown bear is found everywhere in the reserve, both in all types of forests and in the mountain-tundra belt. On the territory of the reserve, it makes seasonal movements from forests to the alpine zone and vice versa, often using trails and country roads for roaming.

What does the bear eat before hibernation

Before bedding, the owner of the taiga needs to accumulate nutrients. A bear is an omnivorous animal, but most of its diet in Kuznetsk Alatau, as in many other places, is made up of plant foods: berries, herbaceous plants, acorns, nuts.

Cedar cones are one of the favorite treats of bears and one of the best bait feeds. Young animals can climb trees and break branches behind them. But mostly they collect fallen cones from the ground. To get to the nuts, the bear collects the cones in a heap and crushes them with his paws, whence, then, lying on the ground, he chooses the language of the nuts with the shell. The shell is partially thrown out during the meal, and partially eaten.

Often the attention of bears is attracted by stocks of nuts made by chipmunks. Digging the holes of animals, bears get to the nuts and eat them, often together with the owner. Do not miss the opportunity to enjoy the larvae of ants, eggs of birds or fish, they also get small rodents and ungulates. A brown bear rarely kills wild ungulates itself, it mainly devours them in the form of carrion or selects prey of other predators (wolf, lynx, wolverines).

The facts of eating by a predator of such species of wild ungulates as elk, deer, roe deer are known. He fills up the prey or found carrion with brushwood and keeps it nearby until he has completely finished eating the carcass. If the beast is not very hungry, it often waits several days until the meat becomes softer.

It is very important how fruitful the year was for feed. Barren years can greatly delay the timing of bears in dens, and animals can continue to feed even in twenty-degree frosts and almost half a meter of snow, digging up cones from under the snow, trying to gain the fat reserve necessary for wintering. In years favorable for food, adult bears accumulate a layer of subcutaneous fat up to 8-12 cm, and the weight of fat reserves reaches 40% of the total weight of the beast. It is with this fat accumulated during the summer and autumn that the bear’s body eats in the winter, experiencing the harshest winter period with the least deprivation.

The hungry years lead to the emergence of connecting rod bears

These are animals that did not manage to gain sufficient fat reserves, which is why they cannot fall into hibernation. Cranks, as a rule, are doomed to death from starvation and frost or from a hunter. But not every bear that met in the winter in the forest will be a connecting rod. During "after school hours" bears appear in the forest, whose sleep in the den is disturbed. Normally well-fed, but torn from hibernation, the bear is forced to look for a new, calmer, haven for sleep. Often the sleep of animals is interrupted by anxiety on the part of man.

The den of the bear

Before heading to the den, the bear diligently muddles the tracks: it winds, winds through the windbreak and even goes backwards in its own tracks. For lairs, deaf and reliable places are usually chosen. Often they are located along the edges of impassable swamps, along the shores of forest lakes and rivers, in windbreaks and on cutting areas. The brown bear arranges its winter dwelling in depressions under twisted roots or tree trunks, sometimes on a pile of brushwood or near an old woodpile. Less often, he chooses a cave for his house or digs deep earthen burrows - soil lairs. The main condition - the home should be dry, quiet and isolated from the presence of unexpected guests. One of the signs of the den's proximity is large bald spots in moss, nibbled or broken off trees. With branches, the beast warms its shelter, and with layers of moss lining the litter. Sometimes the litter layer reaches half a meter. It happens that several generations of bears use the same den.

At the beginning of winter, the daughters

From one to four, but more often two cubs are born. Kids are born blind, without hair and teeth. They weigh only half a kilogram and barely reach 25 cm in length. It is interesting that the nipples of the bears are not located along the abdominal line, as in most animals, but in the warmest places: in the axillary and inguinal cavities. Teddy bears feed on milk of a 20 percent fat content of their still sleeping mother, and grow rapidly. In a few months of such a diet, the cubs completely transform, and from the den they come out already shaggy and nimble. True, it is still very non-independent.

How a bear sleeps in a den

In the den, in warmth and safety, bears sleep all long and cold winters. Often, the bear sleeps on its side, curled up in a ball, sometimes on the back, less often sits with its head between its paws. If the beast is disturbed during sleep, it is easily awakened. Often, the bear itself leaves the den during prolonged thaws, returning to it at the slightest cooling.

Hibernating animals (for example, hedgehogs, chipmunks, etc.) become numb, their body temperature drops sharply, and although life activity continues, its symptoms are almost invisible. In a bear, the body temperature decreases slightly, only by 3-5 degrees and fluctuates between 29 and 34 degrees. The heart beats rhythmically, although more slowly than usual, breathing becomes somewhat less frequent. The animal does not urinate or defecate. In any other animal, in this case, fatal poisoning would have occurred within a week, and in bears a unique process for the recycling of waste products into healthy proteins. In the rectum, a dense plug forms, which some call "bushings." The predator loses it as soon as it leaves the den. The cork consists of tightly pressed dry grass, the bear’s wool, ants, pieces of resin and pine needles.

Brown bears sleep one by one, and only females that have young yearlings are laid with their cubs. The duration of hibernation depends on weather conditions, health and age of the animal. But usually this is the period from the second half of November to the first half of April.

Why a bear sucks a paw

There is a funny opinion that a bear sucks its paw during hibernation. But actually in January, February change of hard skin on the paw pads, while the old skin breaks, peels, and itches severely, and in order to somehow reduce these unpleasant sensations the animal licks its paws.

It took more than one thousand years of natural selection to form such a complex system of adaptations, as a result of which the bears acquired the ability to survive in territories with severe climatic conditions. One can only wonder at the diversity and wisdom of nature.

Earlier on Bears:

It is no secret that Siberian winter is not an easy test for many animals, and bears are no exception.

In vernacular it is said that the bear hibernates, biologists say - in a winter dream. Details about this interesting process are few. The main reason is the difficulty of collecting data.

What does the bear eat before hibernation

The hungry years lead to the emergence of connecting rod bears

The den of the bear

At the beginning of winter, the daughters

How a bear sleeps in a den

Why a bear sucks a paw

Earlier on Bears:

04.04.2017, 07:55

In the southern regions of the Amur Region, bears wake up. According to experts, the clubfoot does not show much activity, but taking into account recent experience, the population is calling for caution. Last year, bears with unprecedented regularity visited the settlements and even people. Amurskaya truth tried to find out what to expect from large predators in the near future.

Hungry brown migration

Warm early spring began to wake clubfoot about a week earlier than usual. And if in the northern regions of the Amur Region the bears are in no hurry to leave the lairs, then in the south they are already taking their first walks in search of food.

“We climbed out of the den, but have not yet approached the settlements,” said Ivan Bolotsky, deputy head of the regional department for wildlife protection. - Mostly bears wake up in the southern regions. After hibernation, their appetite is serious, and there is not much food in the taiga - no berries, no mushrooms, no roots. In such periods, they eat up the skins of dead animals, some remains, tossing stumps in search of larvae. Alternatively, anthills thawed in the sun can stir up.

Among the first territories where the bears have already awakened is the Arkharinsky district. Meetings of clubfoot with people there are unlikely, but the situation can change quite quickly. The fact is that the region is steppe, there is little forest. Bears are still in small cedar trees, near the rocks, on placers - in remote areas. Now people don’t go there, but meetings with a predator will be possible when the roads become passable.

- In general, it is early to analyze this year, too different factors affect the behavior of predators. Their number is growing, plus animals run to the Amur region from the Khabarovsk Territory - they are saved from fires. The same migration from the Jewish Autonomous Region. There is no food, walnuts and acorns are destroyed by fire, ”said Vadim Romanenko, representative of the wildlife protection department in the Arkharin district. - For this reason, last summer the bear went straight to the district center. He walked through the apiaries, looking for food in the garbage dumps. The famine was in the taiga. You can’t make a forecast for the food supply this year. The pine cone has already formed, but if it floods with rain, damages the fire or dries out the sun, then by the end of summer the bears will again be left without food.

Bear cubs are preparing to go to the den

According to Ivan Bolotsky, even in spite of hunger, bears come out to people extremely rarely. However, last year’s experience rewrote the natural features of predator behavior. Moreover, clubfoot came into settlements even in those areas where there were no special problems with food. Overpopulation of the taiga is called one of the possible reasons - it becomes crowded in the forest with bears.

bears lives in the Amur region

- Mostly young people or old animals came to people. In the forest, all sites are clumsy, the weakest have to look for their niche outside the traditional habitat zones, ”says Ivan Leonidovich. “The situation is worsened by the low popularity of clubfoot hunting.” Demand for derivatives is falling, few people eat meat. The hides are of interest except as a decoration for the floor in the bedroom, but there are few such lovers in our area. In addition, a permit to prey on a bear costs three thousand rubles, while on an elk, for comparison, it will cost the hunter two times cheaper.

According to the staff of the hunting department, the situation can be changed by amendments to the hunting rules, which may come into force this year. The fact is that the autumn bear hunt, according to today's rules, begins on August 1 and ends on November 30. Now bear lovers expect an extension of these terms until January 15th. Thus, once upon a time, the once traditional and beloved type of Russian hunting will become accessible - on lairs. Today, similar extraction of clubfoot is prohibited.

Underfoot Poaching

At the same time, the Amur Department of Wildlife Protection has noted an abnormally increased demand for permits to hunt a bear. According to the approved quotas, from August 1, 2016 to July 31, 2017, Amur residents are allowed to get 547 bears. Already to date, 496 permits have been issued, although in past years the hunters did not show such a stormy interest. They selected no more than 70 percent of permits for the entire season.

The reasons for such a sharp increase in popularity for a bear hunt have yet to be figured out, but there are no particular illusions in places.

- The permit gives the right to be in the forest with rifled weapons. But whether this man will prey on a bear is a big question. Yes, I understand that permission to bear is the most expensive, but hunting for other species is also not all year round. The terms are different, and it’s not customary to go with a rifled barrel, ”says Valery Bayvorovsky, a leading specialist expert on the wildlife protection department in the Skovorodinsky district. - Roughly speaking, in this case we are talking about banal poaching, which is hiding under official permission. We catch, of course, we keep the situation under control, but now difficulties have been added. In the age of high technology we live. In areas like ours, everyone knows each other. I just drove away from the house, and in all whatsaps there were already mailings - which way the district hunting expert went, which highway, which car.

Sing and dance: how to avoid trouble when meeting a bear

A bear extremely rarely attacks a person: only if it is disturbed in a winter den, wounded or taken by surprise with prey. Bears are dangerous, having cubs with them, as well as connecting rods.

In the forest, make noise, sing, talk loudly or tie a bell to your backpack. Avoid thickets, windbreaks. Best used for guarding huskies and German shepherds.

Do not create landfills; food waste is recommended to be immediately burned or transported over a considerable distance. It is useless to dig in - the bear has an excellent scent. In the forest you cannot approach the remains of animals, fish

When traveling through the taiga and tundra, do not use bear trails. They are two parallel chains of pits at a distance of 20 cm from each other. You should also avoid moving along river banks and along spawning grounds at dusk, at dawn and at night. When meeting a bear, stop, keep calm. If the bear does not know about your presence, you can leave unnoticed. Do not scream or throw anything at the bear. This can provoke him to attack. Do not run! You cannot escape from the bear.

If the bear comes to you, try not to look threatening, stop. Speak with the bear in a calm, confident tone. This can calm him and help calm you down. Let the bear know that you are human. If the bear cannot recognize who you are, it may come closer or stand on its hind legs to better see or sniff. A standing bear with its legs down is usually curious; it is not dangerous. You can try to slowly move back diagonally without taking your eyes off the bear, but if the bear begins to follow you, stop and do not move.

If the bear came too close - not a step back! Keep talking in a calm voice. If the beast stops approaching, try to increase the distance between you. If the predator is not aggressive, then most likely it will refuse to continue communication and leave.

If the bear rushes at you, you need to evaluate the type of attack - defensive or predatory? In the second case, you need to respond aggressively. Let the bear know that you will fight if he attacks. The more persistently the bear behaves, the more aggressive you must respond. Raise your voice, knock on trees. Look bear directly in the eye. Stomp your foot, taking a step or two towards the bear. Seem more than it really is, slowly stand on a log or stone. Threaten the bear with any object that turns up under the arm. Remember: most attacks stop abruptly.

In a defensive attack, fall to the ground, pretend to be dead. Lie on your stomach, legs spread a little, or curl up in a ball. Cover your head with your fingers locked in the lock on the back of your head. If the bear flips you onto your back, continue to roll on the ground until you are again in the face down position to protect your stomach and vital organs. A backpack will help to somehow protect the back and neck. Do not fight or scream. Stay still for as long as possible. If you move and the bear sees or hears you, he may return and resume the attack.

The bear is a formidable forest predator that belongs to the mammalian family, but has the most stocky physique. A special phenomenon is the winter hibernation, in the causes and features of which we will understand in detail today.

Which bears hibernate?

The bears have a nomadic spirit, and many species move year-round, with the exception of a brown and Himalayan bear, just these species go to a cozy den for the winter and refuse to wander around the world, preferring to them a measured sleep. Females of a polar bear also sleep, falling asleep while bearing offspring.

Reasons for hibernation in bears

The causes of hibernation in bears are as follows:

Serious difficulties with food in the cold season. It is not difficult for bears to provide themselves with food of animal origin in winter, but such a diet will not be complete and sufficient for their survival. True, the smell of this predator allows him to easily find berries and fruits in snowdrifts, but still - these findings are too scarce for wintering. That is why there is no better way out than to plunge into a long and healthy sleep.
Bear size plays a role in this important biological process. The average weight of the clubfoot is about half a ton. So imagine how much food is needed for this huge thing to be full all winter. There is practically no vegetation, and catching a hare, a fox, or fish on an ice-bound river is not an easy task. And in winter, as with any living organism, energy consumption is much higher than in summer - a lot of energy is spent on maintaining the optimal body temperature in the cold.

Hibernation and its features

The duration of hibernation can stretch to six months, so you need to stock up energy for future use. During sleep, the body will extract it from subcutaneous fat, carefully deposited in bear bins in the summer.

In the sleepy period of the year, the body begins to function differently - in the scientific literature such a restructuring is called a process suspended animation in which the heart rate slows down and breathing becomes rarer. This regimen contributes to a reasonable consumption of oxygen in a bear's den and saves valuable nutritious subcutaneous fat - these two important resources last for months.

It is interesting that during hibernation a bear can lose weight almost 2 times.

The animal sleeps quite sensitively - it can be confidently said that he simply doesze for a long time. Therefore, if a flock of hungry howling predators sweeps past the den, this can easily wake the bear. As you know, there is nothing worse than waking up a sleeping sleeper, and even more so a bear - he is angry and hungry, so he can go to the nearest village for food to open a couple of warehouses there.

Bears often do not lose time in the winter and give birth to cubs in the den, sometimes even up to 5 per litter. The weight of a newborn clubfoot is only a few hundred grams. Cubs are born blind, helpless nonsense and their food in the first months is mother's milk. With a bear, kids spend up to 1.5 years of their lives.

Probably everyone knows that to stumble upon a bear with a cub is a dangerous sight, which even the worst enemy would be scared to wish, because when you meet a bear it might not be too good for you - the maternal instinct of the bear will force you to tear the threat to shreds.

Why hibernate suck paw: interesting versions

People say that a bear in hibernation sucks its own paw, supposedly because of this it is easier for it to survive severe Russian cold. True, few can say for sure what kind of paw is actually in question. Yes, and having opened the search engine, finding a photo with this spectacle is almost impossible - the photos come across strange and diverge from expectations, given that even hunters and foresters today have mobile phones with a camera. How then to find out the truth?

Version one

Everything is extremely simple:

Scientists say that the bear's paw is covered with a thick layer of skin, thanks to which they easily overcome stony ledges, without experiencing discomfort.
During hibernation, new skin builds up, preparing the paws for the new summer season.
To make the process faster, the bear places its paw closer to the face and bites into unnecessary skin. This process is unpleasant because the sole itches during itching.

Second version

The second interesting hypothesis is related to cubs, which can suck their paw, not living outside. This is due to the fact that the baby in nature, as we have already said, feeds on mother’s milk for a long time, and the nipples of the bear are not on the stomach, but in the armpits and in the groin. If a little bear grows in fatherlessness and without a mother, then he is fed a pacifier, like a child. But instincts take their toll: the teddy bear is sorely lacking contact with mom, so he begins to suck on the paw, considering it a maternal nipple. By the way, in nature such a phenomenon is not common.

Bear after hibernation: what is it?

In the video below, you can see unique shots captured by random eyewitnesses, in which the bear just got out of the den after a long hibernation - his hair does not shine, but hangs in shreds, and nothing remains of impressive size, the bear is still sleepy and a little bewildered . As soon as the bear eats the first berries, digs out someone’s food reserves in last year’s grass and catches fish hurrying to spawn along the turbulent rivers, it will soon regain its impressive size.

Nature is brilliant and prudent, as proof of which is the hibernation of bears. Thanks to this phenomenon, they successfully survive the winter, spending fat, which has accumulated special for this period.