Survival Skills of Bears

[brotherbear]

Great Bear Almanac by Gary Brown - Common Foods.
American Black Bear - Not great hunters; Use's claws, lips, tongue, and incisor teeth to remove seeds, insects, and other small morsels with dexterity; Diet consists of 85% vegetable matter; Uses incisors to bite grass stems.
Asiatic Black Bear - Eats a large variety of foods; Uses domestic livestock when forced by poor natural foods.
Brown Bear - North American brown bear have higher percentage of vegetation ( 85 to 98% ) and lower percentage of fruits than many other bears in their diet; eat more than 200 types of plants; Syrian brown bear almost totally vegetarian; Kamchatka brown bear feeds principally on fish; Feeds less than nine hours a day in some areas; Bites grass stems with molars; Uses claws as a specialized feeding "tool"; Some European brown bears scoot on their haunches and butt when feeding, consuming the foods between their legs; Uses teeth and claws to catch fish; seldom slap fish out of water; Can catch 60 to 100 fish a day; Can eat 35 pounds of fish in a day; Can consume 80 to 90 pounds of fish a day during the peak of a spawning season; Eats all of a fish except the head and gills; Consumes more animals, prey and carcasses than American and Asiatic black bears.
Polar Bear - Most carnivorous of the bears; Only bear that spends more time in the water and eats more meat than the brown bear; Stalks areas with open water and active movements of ice, and where they are most apt to find seals; Stands to observe and locate a dark object on the ice; Often synchronizes feeding on seals with the seals patterns of sleeping alongside its breathing hole; Stomach capacity is 150 pounds; Eats skin and blubber first, then meat; eats 100 to 150 pounds of blubber per meal; Eats mostly skin and blubber of the seal; one seal is energy for eleven days; Typically kills and eats a seal once every four to five days; Digs for puffins and begs for blubber from whaling ships; Eats berries during the summer; ( butt and muzzle stained bluish ).
Sloth Bear - Expert termite hunter; discovers termites by smell ( termites are the year-round staple ); Capable of locating a grub three feet deep in the ground; Specialized snout for vacuuming termites and ants; lacks two incisor teeth; has long snout and lips that form a tube; closes nostrils by pressing down nose pad; Noisy, with sucking sound heard more than 200 yards away; Does not meet in feeding groups like other bears, due to even food dispersal; Fruits are important April through June; Rarely preys on other mammals or feeds on carrion.
Sun Bear - Uses exceptionally long tongue for specialized feeding; Eats small vertebrates, invertebrates, fruits, and other vegetation.
Spectacled Bear - More vegetarian than most species of bears ( diet is 95% vegetable matter ); Bromeliads make up 46.8% of diet; Eats some plant foods that are too tough for other animals ( cactus and woody plants ); Remains in trees for several days during the trees' short fruit-ripening period ( longer than other bears ).
Giant Panda - Has very low level of digestibility; Must eat often and for long periods of time to gain the necessary nutrition; Actively feeds over fourteen hours per day ( 65% of the day during spring; 52% in the summer; and 62% in the winter ); May consume 45 to 85 pounds of bamboo per day; Sits and brings food to its mouth with paws; It has a good sense of taste and smell which seems unnecessary for an animal that eats only bamboo. Reply