Dishonest Bears

Mammals use a variety of means to communicate with one another: vocal, scent, and visual. Even those that are mostly solitary need to do this from time to time, whether to mark out their territories as a warning to others or to attract mates. 

Often these signals need to convey more than the basic message, but also provide some information about the animal that left them. This often includes physical fitness, whether to intimidate potential intruders or to advertise oneself as a sexual partner. At close range, this can be achieved through such things as growing huge antlers, proving that you have the physical capacity to waste resources on something that's otherwise pointless. But, at longer range, a simple indicator of size may be all that's required.

Fishing for Salmon (When You're a Bear)

Bears like eating fish. Among the most iconic images of brown bears (Ursus arctos) are those that show them wading out into a wide river or by a waterfall, and catching salmon for their food. Yet this isn't necessarily an image of everyday ursine behaviour.

This is because wide rivers, whitewater rapids, and so on, aren't all that common. Or at least, they don't form the majority of bear habitat. We watch and photograph bears feeding in such places because it looks dramatic and, more importantly, it's relatively easy to do. It's the same with other predators. We know a fair amount about the hunting habits of wolves and lions because we can watch them in Yellowstone Park or the Serengeti, where the terrain is wide open. That allows us to safely observe their behaviour from a distance, so, understandably, we'd prefer it where possible.

Social Posting - Bear Style

Communication between animals is an important feature of all mammalian species. For those living in groups, it can help to maintain social bonds and provide urgent information, such as the unexpected arrival of a predator. If a mother has young, she may need to find them if they become lost or attend to them if are distressed, and so on. Even solitary adult animals need to communicate with others of their species, whether it be to mark out a territory and ensure that others don't poach their food source, or to find a mate at the appropriate time.

At least among mammals, there are two primary modes of communication that are generally studied by researchers. Perhaps the more obvious of these to we humans is vocal communication, since that's the main one we used in pre-literate societies. Not all species are especially vocal, but many are, and some are using sound outside of the human hearing range - such as the ultrasound squeaks of many small rodents such as mice. One estimate suggests that around 95% of mammal species use acoustic communication and this may be on the low side (it's 100% in birds and 90% in amphibians, but apparently less than 5% in reptiles, suggesting that it has evolved at least three times).

The Best Place to Den

Winter is a difficult time for many animals at high latitudes. Food is scarce, and the cold climate itself is a problem. Although many mammals do manage to keep going through the winter, others migrate to warmer climes, while many of those that don't hibernate instead. While this is by no means easy, for animals that can manage it, it allows them to preserve their energy, surviving off body fat without the need to search for food.

There has, historically, been some dispute as to whether bears truly hibernate or not. This is because the sort of undoubted hibernation practised by, say, bats, involves an almost total shutting down of normal metabolic functions with the animal effectively becoming cold-blooded for the duration. Bears do not do this; while they are asleep through the winter, their body temperature drops from a normal level of 37°C (99°F) to a low of 33°C (91°F). Now, this is not insignificant, since a human with a body temperature that low would be suffering from clinical hypothermia and in fairly urgent need of medical treatment. But still, you're not going to be so cold that dew literally starts forming on you, as happens with bats.

Being a Little Bit Pregnant

Sun bear

In my ongoing series on the members of the weasel family, I have, on a number of occasions, referred to the concept of delayed implantation. A number of members of the weasel family exhibit this phenomenon, and they are far from alone among mammals.

To begin with, the egg cell starts to divide immediately after fertilisation. In most mammals, it then rapidly forms into a hollow ball of cells that move down through the reproductive tract into the womb. During this time, it really doesn't change much in size; the ball of cells, known as a blastocyst, is not much larger than the unfertilised egg, and the individual cells within it are much smaller.

Once it reaches the womb, the blastocyst attaches itself to the uterine lining and begins to send out tiny tendrils of cells that penetrate the wall in search of blood vessels. Once it finds them, the embryo can obtain nutrients from the mother, and starts to grow and develop. The side of the structure in contact with the uterine lining develops into the placenta, while the remainder forms the embryo proper, and the amniotic membranes surrounding it. This even occurs in marsupials, although, in their case, the placenta is primitive and short-lived, and, for that matter, there's something similar in some reptiles, such as sea snakes.

Making your Mark

For most humans, the dominant sense is that of vision. Although the other senses are important, vision is particularly important to us, and it is generally well-developed in other primates, too, perhaps because most of them spend a lot of their time swinging through trees, where a good idea of the location of nearby branches is definitely helpful. But, for most mammals, the sense of smell is much better developed than it is in us, and far more important to the way they interpret the world.

One of the many ways that they make use of this is through scent marking. Apart from those that spend most of their lives in the water, the great majority of mammals scent mark in some way, and humans are a bit of an oddity in this respect. To assist them in scent marking, many mammals possess special glands producing smelly secretions that they can place on prominent landmarks, or in other locations that fellow members of their species might come across. And, of course, any cat or dog owner is familiar with the concept of using urine as a mark - the urine contains unique chemicals that can provide far more information to the animals concerned than it does to us.

The actual purpose of scent marking varies depending on the nature of the animal, and, particularly, its lifestyle and habits. For many animals, it can be used to stake out patches of territory, or to advertise sexual receptivity, for example, and that will depend both on how the animal claims territory, and on the details of their mating habits, such as how promiscuous they might be.

Along with polar bears, brown bears (Ursus arctos) are amongst the largest of all carnivorans. Like many carnivores - although unlike, say, wolves, lions, or otters - they are solitary animals as adults. Scent marking is therefore particularly useful for them, allowing them to record their presence and leave information for any other bears that may happen to wander through the same area. However, they are not particularly territorial. They do, like most other mammals, have a "home range" through which they habitually travel, but this regularly overlaps with those of other bears, of either sex, especially where food is abundant, and several bears live relatively close together.