Black Bear
· Black Bear Habitat
· Black Bear Food
· Black Bear Behaviour
· Conservation status
· Black Bear Attacks
· Black Bear Hunting
· Black Bear Facts

Black Bear Behaviour

Black Bear Behaviour – Fishing

The black bear is an excellent fisher, probably due to its great eyesight up close. The black bear will stand absolutely still in a stream, awaiting fish to pass by close enough to be caught. The black bear can try to catch the fish with either its mouth or paws, try to paw the fish into the mouth or simply throw the fish up onto land. There are a lot of ways for the black bear to catch a fish but all of them involve some serious timing and agility which makes this behaviour very special for the black bear, and bears in particular.

Black Bear Behaviour – Mating

The black bear will mate during the summer but so cleverly designed is the black bear female that she will not feel any effect of the pregnancy until it is time for hibernation. This is to ensure that the female will have enough fat to both survive and be pregnant during hibernation, if the female is not fat enough the pregnancy will automatically be cancelled. The cubs are born very early in the year and since they are tiny and helpless they will spend their first time in the den and feed upon the mother’s milk. The female black bear will give birth to between two to five cubs and will stay with the mother for over 1,5 year. Then the cubs are totally independent and have all the black bear behaviour of an adult, all taught too them by their mother.

Black Bear Behaviour – Hibernating

In colder areas the black bear will sometime during winter go into hibernation, a very deep sleep. The black bear will during the summer fatten up since there is a lot of food to go around and as soon as it is getting chillier and food starts to go scarce it will find a safe location, turning it into its den. A black bear den can be any kind of hole in the ground, a hollow tree or even under gatherings of rocks and trees. When the black bear have found a safe den it will go into a very deep sleep, a sleep which lowers the black bears metabolism incredibly. That way the black bear is able to survive the entire winter without eating, just using up its reserve of fat.