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During a five-month hibernation, a female bear gives birth to two or three cubs (rarely up to six). Though the bears mate in mid-summer, the fertilized embryos do not implant on the uterine wall until November. This delayed implantation means that the young will be born in January. The cubs are born with their eyes open and are active after five or six weeks. They nurse on high-fat milk and snuggle up with the sow to stay warm.
When the cubs and sow leave the den in the spring, the cubs weigh four to eight pounds. The young quickly gain weight and may tip the scales between 15 and 165 pounds by mid-summer, depending upon the availability of food. Generally, the cubs will spend the next winter with their mother in a winter den before they disperse the following spring.
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Diet
Bears are omnivores and their diets run the menu from grasses to carrion. They eat insects, berries, nuts, roots, grasses, herbs, bees, honey, insects, fish, young deer or elk, road kill, dog food and human food. Like Yogi, a black bear never saw a picnic basket it didn’t like.
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The adult black bear averages two and a half to three feet tall, from paw to shoulder, and four to six feet in length, tail to nose. They lack the distinctive shoulder hump of their cousins, the grizzly bear. Though seemingly large and clumsy, the black bear is extremely dexterous. It can handle small objects.
Males weigh more than females, sometimes up to 33 percent more. The weight range for adult male bears varies by diet and habitat, but an average is about 250 pounds. The general range for adult males is 125 to 600 pounds. The heaviest recorded black bear weighed 902 pounds.
Like humans, bears are plantigrades: they walk on the whole sole of the foot. Their flat feet have five toes (Panda bears have six), and their walk is slightly pigeon-toed. Their leathery soles are dark in color and deeply wrinkled. The claws on the hind and fore foot are about the same length and are thick at the base and taper to a sharp point; the foreclaws are sharply curved. Its track may serve as an indicator of age, sex, weight and species. An average adult male bear’s forefoot track measures four and a half inches long by four inches wide. Its hindfoot track measures seven inches long and four inches wide.
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A black bear’s head is broad with a long, narrow muzzle. The female’s head is generally more slender and long-pointed than the male’s. Black bears have 42 teeth; their adult teeth are in by age 2 ½. Their sugary diet may cause tooth decay and loss of teeth, which may lead to poor health or starvation. Like tree ring dating, the tiny rings or “cement deposits” around a premolar tooth can serve as an indication of a bear’s age.
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