World's oldest wild bear dies in Minnesota forest

Post date: Aug 27, 2013 5:50:05 PM

Bear No. 56 was informally called the"hump-nosed sow'' when she was first collared, because of the bump on her nose. That hump faded over the years, and researchers simply call her No. 56. DNR photo

Article by: PAUL WALSH , Star Tribune

Updated: August 27, 2013 - 12:28 PM

The world’s oldest-known wild bear has died of old age in northern Minnesota, quietly coming to her final resting place in a shady spot in the forest.

The world’s oldest-known wild bear has died of old age in northern Minnesota, quietly coming to her final resting place in a shady spot that a bear would find as a good place for a daytime nap, a leading state researcher said Tuesday.

The decomposed corpse of the female American black bear, known to Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) researchers as Bear No. 56, was found last Wednesday by state researcher Karen Noyce in the Chippewa National forest near Marcell. The bear was 39 1/2 years old.

The bear was first captured and radio-collared in July 1981 by DNR scientists during the first summer of a long-term research project on bear population ecology. She was 7 years old at the time and accompanied by three female cubs.

During the next 32 years, she and her many offspring provided an almost uninterrupted record of reproduction, survival, movements and, eventually, aging. The DNR says the information from this bear and her offspring have “contributed significantly to the scientific literature on black bear biology.”

In the last few years of her life, Bear No. 56 began to visit some hunters’ baits, but they abided by a DNR request not shoot collared bears.

“We’re very fond of that bear,” Noyce said. “But it’s not like a pet or anything, when you have a relationship.”

Noyce said that when she would visit Bear No. 56 in recent years, “I would sit there for a while, sit there and absorb sitting next to a very, very old bear.”

She said her agency was “hoping she’d make it to 40. … She was having trouble getting around, but eating normally. She couldn’t see and couldn’t hear. She was stumbling around.

“We’re glad to see she died a natural death. … It was a good way to go.”

Noyce estimates that the bear died sometime in July, weeks before she used a DNR pilot’s coordinates from the radio transmission to locate the animal. She said this is the first bear in the DNR’s study to die of old age.

“She had left her home range … looking for food, apparently,” Noyce said. “I was surprised in her state that she would do that. She was just lying in a wooded spot, next to a little bit of a low area, a shady area. It was a kind of place a bear would lay down and take a midday nap.”

Noyce retrieved a few bones upon discovery. State researchers will collect the rest of the remains soon.

From 1981-1995, Bear No. 56 produced eight litters of cubs and successfully reared 21 of the 22 cubs to 18 months of age.

Bear No. 56 outlived by 19 years all of the 360 other radio-collared black bears that DNR researchers have followed since 1981. She also outlived any radio-collared bear of any species in the world. Only a very few individual study bears have been reported to reach age 30. The second-oldest was a brown bear in Alaska that lived to 34.

“We know most of the people in the world who have radio-tracked bears for a long time,” Noyce said, explaining how her profession settled on No. 56 as the world’s oldest.

Researchers suspect Bear No. 56’s longevity probably is best attributed to a combination of factors, including a home range with few people or major roads, her predisposition to avoiding people and just good fortune in general.

When last handled in March 2010, Bear No. 56 was a healthy weight but her teeth showed excessive wear and her eyes were clouding. Since then, her hearing and eyesight continued to deteriorate.

Bear No. 56 had been observed by people during the past two summers with increasing frequency, foraging along trails and traveling dirt roads, likely because of the greater ease of travel than in the woods.

The average age of a bear killed by a Minnesota hunter is less than 4 years old, and about 80 percent of No. 56’s many cubs died by age 6. Of the hundreds of bears that have been radio-collared and studied by the DNR over the past 32 years, the longest any survived was 23 years. Some bears in zoos have made it into their 40s, Noyce said.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482