Bear Diet
What Does The Bear Diet Consist Of?
Bear diet, depending on which species is in question and the habitat in which they dwell, is about as varied as our own. The bear will hunt, grizzly and polar bears in particular, and can take down a moose calf or a deer with moderate effort. He may seem too large and noisy to hunt, but we mustn’t mistake him for a sluggish, clumsy animal. The bear can, and will, chase down prey or threats with an almost surreal amount of tact and speed. It is said of the grizzly that he is only seen and heard if he wants to be, which is to insinuate that you might be within 50 feet of him and never realize that he is there. That’s a pretty amazing feet from a 600 pound, 4 feet tall, fuzzy animal. The grizzly bear diet changes as well, depending upon whether he calls the mountainous regions home, or if he prefers to dwell in the flatter, lower lying forest areas.
Most of the time, the bear diet consists of foraged plant materials, such as flowers, berries, and fruits. For a little bit of added sport, not to mention a nice amount of protein, the bear will eat ants and other insects. Depending on his mood that particular day, he will partake in frogs and other amphibious animals. Other days, the bear could watch fifty little frogs hop right in front of him with little more than bland curiosity. He is moody, like we are, and some days we just don’t ice cream. We love it, and yesterday we couldn’t get enough of it. But today we want potato chips. The bear diet is much that way as well, unless he is starving or desperately in need of fast weight gain.
The bear diet also depends highly on the fish which are available to him. The grizzly bear diet is steeped in salmon, as everyone knows, but there are recent studies which show that the grizzly needs to be careful about just how much salmon he consumes during the run. They gorge themselves when this miraculous free meal rolls through town, but this can give him elevated levels of waste and toxins during the hibernation seasons. The bear diet must be made up of many different foods in order to fulfill his complex physiological habits.
Bear diet will also include grains, and just about any human food made available. One the greatest human to bear conflicts is caused by the human’s irresponsible dealings with the storage and disposal of food. We are closer than we have ever been to the bears world, and along with our noise and destruction of his habitat come new feeding opportunities. The curious bear will wander in after a tasty sent, only to cause and to find more trouble than he intended to.