Bears as Predators ~

[brotherbear]

Bears of the World by Paul Ward and Suzanne Kynaston.

The structure of the gut is also ( *besides teeth ) intimately related to the diet. Herbivorous animals often have a large chamber in which they are able to ferment their food ( with the aid of symbiotic microbes ); chewed food is passed to this chamber and then, after fermentation, is regurgitated for further chewing before being passed to the stomach for true digestion. Not even the most dedicated vegetarian member of the bears has evolved such a structure and bears are thus particularly inefficient at extracting nutrients from their food. This is one of the reasons why bears tend to opt for the most readily digestible available plant foods, rarely eating older grasses, sedges, and leaves. Specific growth stages of plants also vary in their suitability to bears' dietary preference, even from week to week. Bears are not born with this knowledge of the temporal sequence of appropriate food; it is something which must be learned as a cub, during the time spent with its mother.

The size of the bear obviously affects the size of the prey it can hunt. Brown bears are able to prey on moose, wapiti or elk, caribou or reindeer, bison, and musk ox. Reply