Lions, Tigers, and Fat Bears, Oh My!

I couldn't help it. I had to blog it.

It's no secret that America's adults are getting fat and sedentary. Its children are becoming couch mini-potatoes. Even its pets are overweight.

Now the fast-food lifestyle is getting to the bears, too.

Yes, really.

A study of black bears in the Sierra Nevada has found that those animals that live in and around cities and towns are less active than those in wilderness, spending less of their time foraging for food and fewer days in their winter dens. These and other behavioral changes are making the bears heavier.

You know when I had this revelation? It was at McDonald's in Springfield. Brian and I stopped to get an afternoon snack (yeah, I ate a few fries - mmmm), and this well-dressed Bear, perhaps it was N.Z. Bear, ordered FIVE super-sized Big Mac meals. Five! I mean, that's a lot of soda for a bear, no? And I thought to myself -- perhaps bears are the next obese animal. N.Z. - hope you didn't have heartburn, dude.

But, back to the article, that states that garbage is the ultimate in bear-foraged food. This must mean that Americans are throwing away a portion of their super-sized meals? No...could it be? Or perhaps the Whopper wrappers are tasty to Smokey and his kin.

The researchers, who also are affiliated with the University of Nevada at Reno, attached radio collars to 59 bears and tracked them from week to week. They found that the animals fell into two camps: country bears, which spent almost all of their time in wild lands, and city bears, which lived in residential areas, often right under people's noses. Some city bears denned beneath homeowners' decks or elsewhere in backyards in towns like Incline Village and Stateline, Nev.

The researchers followed individual bears for 24 hours in the fall to study their foraging habits. In the case of the urban bears, Dr. Beckmann said, that often meant following them from parking lot to parking lot at night while they fished in Dumpsters and garbage cans for their dinner.

A black bear fattening up for the winter is a glutton, eating upward of 20,000 calories a day. In the study, country bears, forced to roam over wild lands searching for pine cones, troves of berry bushes or the occasional prey, spent more than 13 hours a day foraging. City bears, with all that rich garbage for the taking, spent much less time, an average of about 8.5 hours a day.

Do you remember that video game Rampage? Now I'm thinking of it in terms of bears (instead of more interesting critters like...monsters) ravaging cities for FOOD. And this amuses me. Rack up those points!

But I have to go to work, and a silly snark can only last so long. So here, you aspiring capitalists. Here's a product for you to tout and sell.

For a bear, weight is not unattractive, or unhealthy, as far as anyone knows. Rather, the problem with eating human food is that it brings bears into contact with humans, and the bears invariably lose. That kitchen-ransacking bear, for example, was destroyed. Many other urban bears are killed by motor vehicles. Nevada, Dr. Beckmann said, has only 300 black bears, and is losing about 10 a year to accidents.

The solution, he said, is to require or encourage businesses and homeowners to use bear-proof trash containers. In places where they are used, the bears go elsewhere.

Yes, I realize Bears in the cities/our backyards is a bad thing, but that headline had me from hello.

Oh, and remember. Only YOU can prevent Bear Obesity.

hln

Posted by hln at November 25, 2003 08:05 AM | Nutrition | TrackBack