Are grizzly bears hand dominant5/7/2023 A cub may be considered an easy source of calories for a hungry bear. Even subadult and small adult female bears can fall victim to predatory attacks by larger bears. Females sometimes kill the cubs of other sows.īears are cannibalistic.Infanticide occurs outside of mating season.Putting the sow back into estrus does not guarantee that the infanticidal male will be the one mating with her, another more dominant male may end up mating with her.There is no guarantee the infanticidal male will get to mate with the sow whose cubs he killed.This theory claims that male bears kill cubs so the mother will no longer lactate and therefore be able to go back into estrus (“heat”). Research and observations currently consider three motivations for this behavior. There is no one simple answer to this tough question. Infanticide does end up with the mother also being killed in some cases. Well, infanticide does indeed exist in nature and this past July I, unfortunately, witnessed a large male bear kill a cub, and then brutally attack the mother of the cub when she tried to intervene. In past years at Katmai National Park, I watched a couple of close calls where an adult tried to kill a cub. This uglier side of nature, infanticide, and the killing of baby bears by an adult (usually male) bear, is something I never wished to witness. Witnessing the infanticide of a bear cub was a behavior I wished never to see.Īdult bears are also known to kill bear cubs, including cubs from the female they impregnated. Male bears search for females to mate with, but they eat, sleep, hibernate alone, and fight with other bears. Mother bears perform all the work (birthing, feeding, protecting their cubs, and hibernating with their cubs). This is especially true for mother bears. Over time my attitude towards bears has moved from fear of them to respect for them. I spend a lot of time around them and enjoy learning about them by watching their behavior and studying research on bears.
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