Animal testing: Turkish beekeeper finds thieving bears prefer premium honey

Ibrahim Sedef discovers to his cost that they don’t just settle for the bear necessities

Alison Rourke

Thu 29 Aug 2019 06.54 BSTLast modified on Thu 29 Aug 2019 21.05 BST

A beekeeper in Turkey who was harassed by a particularly persistent group of bears has discovered a profound truth: the animals have very expensive tastes when it comes to honey.

Ibrahim Sedef, an engineer from Trabzon, north-east of Ankara on the Turkey’s Black Sea coast, struggled to keep his bee hives out of the hands of local bears, despite building storage houses and metal cages.

Over three years he estimates he may have lost more than $10,000 worth of honey.

Food decoys, including apples, failed to divert the intruders.

So he decided to set up recording equipment to track the bears and inadvertently embarked on animal testing of a different kind.

Sedef set up four bowls; three contained different types of honey – flower, chestnut and Anzer – and one had cherry jam. He wanted to see which one the bears preferred.

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More bears needed to sustain Pyrenees population: activists

December 26, 2018

A protest by shepherds in Pau, southwest France, this year against the reintroduction of bears in the Pyrenees mountains

The release of additional bears into the Pyrenees mountains straddling France and Spain is needed to ensure the fledgling population's survival, the activist group charged with the bears' protection said Wednesday.

"The good news of 2018 is without doubt the release of two bears in the Bearn region in October," the Ferus association said, referring to the border region.

"But there's still a long road ahead of us," it added.

Government officials have pushed ahead with plans to reintroduce brown bears in a bid to boost biodiversity, despite fierce resistance by sheep and other livestock producers.

Around 40 bears currently roam the mountains since France began importing them from Slovenia in 1996, with Ferus hoping the two newest, Claverina and Sorita, will have cubs sometime next year.

Environmental activists say they are crucial for maintaining a fragile ecosystem threatened by human activity and climate change.

Some farmers, however, have vowed to shoot the bears on sight, saying they are decimating flocks, which now require costly protection from the predators.

Claims by farmers for government compensation have soared, rising by 70 percent this year to 448 cases in the single French department of Ariege, where opposition to the bears has been particularly intense.

"Complete security for the bears is far from assured because of an anti-bear minority which remains violent," Ferus said.

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Berry-gorging bears disperse seeds through scat and feed small mammals

Date:  July 5, 2018

Source:  Oregon State University

Summary:

New research shows that mice and voles scurry to bear scats to forage for seeds, finding nutritional value in the seeds and in some cases further dispersing them.

The study is published in the journal Ecosphere by researchers at Oregon State University and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The research builds on an OSU study that determined that bears are the primary seed dispersers of berry-producing shrubs in Alaska.

In southeastern Alaska, brown and black bears are plentiful because of salmon. Bears frequently supplement their salmon-based diet with fruit as they build their fat stores for winter hibernation. As a result, their seed-filled scats are found throughout the landscape.

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Mountain lions often lose to wolves and bears, study finds

by Shreya Dasgupta on 6 February 2018

When the hunting grounds of pumas overlap with those of other top predators, such as wolves, bears and jaguars, pumas are often the losers, a new study has found.

The findings from the study, a review of existing scientific literature, are especially important given how pumas are still being intensively hunted over much of their range in a bid to reduce conflicts with people and livestock, researchers say.

In some puma habitats where wolves and brown bears are recolonizing and recovering, wildlife managers need to be cautious about hunting limits for pumas, the authors write.

The large, secretive puma (Puma concolor) may be at the top of its food chain, but it is not always the king of its territory.

Native to the Americas, the puma, also called the mountain lion, cougar, catamount or panther, often shares its habitat with several other top predators, such as wolves, bears, coyotes and jaguars. But when the hunting grounds of these predators overlap, the puma is often the loser, researchers report in a new study published in PeerJ.

By reviewing the scientific literature on competition between pumas and other predators, researchers have found that wolves, grizzly bears, black bears and jaguars often dominate pumas. In fact, pumas are subordinate to at least one other top carnivore in 47.5 percent of their range across North and South America. In turn, pumas seem to be dominant only over coyotes and maned wolves.

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Great scat! Bears -- not birds -- are the chief seed dispersers in Alaska

Date:  January 16, 2018

Source:  Oregon State University

Summary:

In southeastern Alaska, brown and black bears are plentiful because of salmon. Their abundance also means they are the primary seed dispersers of berry-producing shrubs, according to a new study.

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Dolphin, bear studies have paved the way to improved population forecasting

Date:  December 11, 2017

Source:  University of New South Wales

Summary:

A new article by a UNSW Sydney-led team challenges the validity of current methods for forecasting the persistence of slow-growing species for conservation purposes, and provides a better approach to reducing the threat of extinction.

Previous research on wild dolphins in Australia and wild bears in North America has revealed that reproductive success is the best predictor of the viability of these long-lived populations, rather than their survival rates.

The findings of these and other studies fly in the face of decades of population modelling, which has led to a widespread generalisation that survival is the most important factor for population viability of long-lived species, the researchers say.

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Wolves and bears to be slaughtered in Romania once again

14 September 2017

By Andy Coghlan

The hunting of bears and wolves is back on the agenda in Romania, less than a year after the government banned trophy hunting. Conservation groups have condemned the U-turn and are calling on the government to rescind the decision.

The move was announced on 5 September by Romania’s environment minister Graţiela Gavrilescu. It will allow up to 140 bears and 97 wolves to be killed “under supervision” by the end of 2017, if they’re deemed to be “nuisance animals” that threaten livestock on farms or frighten people by encroaching into inhabited areas.

But the conservation groups fear that the quotas will be used as an excuse to allow trophy hunting to resume. The government banned that in October 2016.

“It’s unclear if hunters will be allowed to keep the bodies, or sell body parts,” says Masha Kalinina of Humane Society International (HSI). She says the government has caved in to pressure from hunters, farmers and communities that feel threatened.

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Bears breed across species borders

Date: April 19, 2017
Source: Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum

Senckenberg scientists have sequenced the entire genomes of four bear species, making it now possible to analyze the evolutionary history of all bears at the genome level. It shows that gene flow, or gene exchange, between species by extensive hybridization, is possible between most bear species -- not only polar and brown bear. The DNA samples of different bear species came from different European zoos, underlining their importance not only for conservation, but also for research. The study published in Scientific Reports also questions the existing species concept in general, because other genome studies too have, frequently found gene flow among species.

Pizzly, grolars or "capuccino bears" are common names of the offspring resulting from the mating of grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) and polar bears (Ursus maritimus). "Such hybrids among bears are not as rare as we have hitherto assumed," says Prof. Dr. Axel Janke of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt. In a large-scale analysis, a team of scientists led by the German evolutionary geneticist has sequenced six complete bear genomes. Each genome is about 2.5 billion base pairs large. "With these new data of the sun bear, sloth bear, Asiatic black bear and spectacled bear, we now have the genomes of all known bear species," adds Janke.

It has previously been assumed that the number of hybrids between polar and brown bears is increasing due to climate change, because brown bears invade northern regions and polar bears move onto the sea ice later than usual. The new results show however that an abundant flow of genes among different bear species occurred to a good deal in the past. Hybrids are thus not necessarily linked to climate change. "Bears can form hybrids in different combinations," explains Janke, and adds: "We knew this from zoos. In the wild, so far this was only observed for polar bears and brown bear as well as Asiatic black and sun bear."

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Biochemical tricks of the hibernating bear

Date: February 16, 2017

Source: American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB)

Winter is in full swing, and many of us have fantasized about curling up in a warm cave and slumbering until the warmth of spring arrives, just like a bear. Bears have the ability to sleep away the harsh winter months when food is scarce. They can spend five to seven months in hibernation. During this time, bears do not eat, drink, excrete or exercise. Despite the length of inactivity, bears do not experience bone loss, muscle loss, heart complications or blood clots like humans do during extended bouts of inactivity.

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Karen Gjesing Welinder at Aalborg University in Denmark and colleagues set out to understand how wild Scandinavian brown bears protect their health and save energy during hibernation.

"The bear's tricks for hibernation adaptations can inspire and teach us to prevent effects of the restricted mobility of astronauts and of long-term hospitalized patients," says Welinder. "Immobile people lose muscle and bone mass, get blood clots, atherosclerosis and cardiac diseases. Immobile bears do not. Our deeper understanding of the tremendous physiological placidity encoded in animal genomes might be exploited in healthier lifestyles and medical treatments."

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The golden drool: Study finds treasure trove of info in saliva of foraging bears

Date: November 9, 2016

Source: Oregon State University

The rivers and streams of Alaska are littered in the summer and fall with carcasses of tens of thousands of salmon that not only provide a smorgasbord for hungry brown bears but are also the newest database in the arsenal of wildlife biologists.

A new study, published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, documents the ability of researchers to gather DNA from residual saliva on partially consumed salmon to the point that they can even identify individual bears from the genetic samples. The discovery should provide a significant boost to research on the population and health of brown bears, which can grow to a size of 1,500 pounds.

"In the past, population estimates have been largely based on visual observations and on the analysis of fecal samples," said Taal Levi, an assistant professor of fisheries and wildlife at Oregon State University and co-author on the study. "We found that using bear saliva is not only easier and cheaper as a research tool, it is more effective."

In their study, the researchers examined 156 partially consumed salmon carcasses of lakeshore-spawning sockeye salmon in the Chilkoot watershed and stream-spawning chum salmon at Herman Creek in the Klehini watershed -- both near Haines, Alaska. They also swabbed a total of 272 brown bear "scats," or fecal samples, from those same locations.

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