American Black Bear

I have been posting a lot about polar bears recently so I figured I should put out some information on other bears to balance it out some. Today I will be talking about the American Black Bear. I chose to talk about this bear today because most of you have a good chance of encountering one or have encountered one in the past. Let's begin!

This is a map from Wikipedia that represents the current proliferation of the American Black Bear. The scientific name for this bear is Euarctos americanus. This bear has numerous subspecies, up to 16 currently recorded, which can make identifying the species a challenge. The black bear isn't exclusively black in color, it can vary from black to brown and even to white!

They are considered partial hibernators, because they do wake up from time to time if disturbed. It is considered more of a "winter lethargy" where a bear can go up to 100 days without eating, drinking, urinating, defecating or exercising! Their heart rate will drop from a healthy 40-50 beats per minute all the way down to 8 beats per minute. Their hibernation cycles have been under study by groups such as NASA, who are interested in learning more about how they survive so long without organ damage. They hope to be able to reproduce such an ability in humans one day for the purposes of deep space travel.

More information on black bears tomorrow!