Reply: Moths
Once you consider the weight-reduction plan of bears within the wild, you in all probability consider majestic photographs you’ve seen of untamed bears catching fish or adorably mowing by way of patches of untamed berries. Whereas bears definitely do partake of fish, wild berries, numerous vegetation, and even (within the case of bigger grizzly bears) hunt the younger of different giant mammals like deer or bison, their weight-reduction plan is extra numerous than most individuals understand.
What many individuals are stunned to study is that bears eat bugs and that in Yellowstone Nationwide Park…they eat rather a lot of them. Particularly, in the summertime when hordes of miller moths descend on the mountain peaks in Yellowstone, grizzly and black bears alike will climb excessive up above the timberline seeking them.
The moths, by the tons of of hundreds, land on the rocky slopes and burrow down into the unfastened slide rock on the mountain slopes. The bears will come up the mountain, dig by way of the unfastened rocks, and gorge on the moths. The bears can eat upwards of 40,000 moths a day which, because of the excessive fats content material of the moths’ our bodies, works out to round 20,000 energy. A bear who systematically works the slopes for a month in the summertime can eat near half their calorie wants for the complete yr.
The whole cycle of mountainside-moth-infestation to delicious-bear-snacks isn’t simply an interesting one, however a extremely useful one too. Not solely do the bears get numerous energy (a boon within the face of shrinking sources of different excessive calorie meals of their surroundings), however the interval throughout which the bears climb excessive up the slopes of the park coincides with a busy time of yr for Yellowstone, which suggests there are fewer bears down within the timberland areas the place the majority of the guests are.
Picture courtesy of the Nationwide Park Service/Jim Peaco.
from TechFishNews http://ift.tt/2w1g34W
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