Bear Dissection
-Bears are omnivores, eating honey, berries, fruits, and lots of meat
-The Panda is the only exception, the panda eats 99% vegetation
-Bears do not hibernate in the winter
-There are three types of metabolism shutting down or slowing down
-Hibernation- an almost complete shutdown of the metabolism
-Torpor- A slowing down of the metabolism almost by half at the time of sleeping (Once a day)
-Bats do this to conserve energy
-Winter sleep- A long period of resting and sleeping
-Some bears partake in winter sleep
-Bears have the best sense of smell in the animal kingdom. They can smell food for miles away
-They are smart but are not a social animal so they are not really trainable and cannot become pets! (Dont try)
-The polar bear is the worlds largest bear only sometimes matched with the Grizzly bear. The polar bear lives on the glaciers of Alaska and the Grizzly bear lives in the woods of Alaska.
-Because of global warming the glaciers are melting and the polar bears are forced to move down into the grizzly bear range.
-Because their ranges are mixing the ecological sexual barrier that use to be in place has been removed.
-Now we are seeing hybrids of polar bears and grizzly bears
-This could lead to the extinction
-Another threat to polar bears is bio magnification of pollutants
-Many of the world's pollutants end up in the northern ice caps due to currents and winds
-The mercury in the ocean ends up in the diatoms-krill-fish-whales-birds-polar bears
-For every trophic level the bio magnification goes up 10 times
-We are seeing that the mercury in the ocean is causing polar bear brains to deteriorate
-It is important to study the affects of mercury on polar bear brains because a similar affect is happening to humans.