Queen of Firsts

The den cam captured some good family action today just before 4 PM CST http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh2QTx32w6A. Lily is trying to cope with the little ones.  Hope licks a cub and is being good.  The cubs are climbing for nipples and not screaming too badly in this 10-degree weather that is 31 degrees warmer than last night.   It’s one of the best looks at the family and something we want to send out to networks to see what happens.  We’re seeing all this without anyone going near the den now since January 13, nearly 3 weeks ago.  It’s the kind of undisturbed observations we could never get before these Den Cams.

Speaking of unprecedented opportunities, Lily is the Queen of Firsts—the first bear to give birth online, the proud mother of the first mixed-age litter to be seen online, and now possibly the mother of the first brown cub in the study clan.  We’re calling that one a male, but a flash today made us want to get another good look to be doubly sure before naming.

What if Hope were a male?  Would she be as good to the cubs?  Good question.  We don’t know, of course, but from what dog owners tell us about older male pups helping newborns, it’s possible things could be the same.   Another thing that helps us think that is how badly big Ted wanted to be friends with little cub Lucky and how the two have stuck together and are sleeping together at this moment.  For a first from them, the Ted and Lucky Den Cam caught them doing mutual tongue-licking, a behavior we don’t really understand but have seen before between mother and cubs.  We speculated that it could be a way to pass microorganisms that could aid digestion, but now seeing it between 14-year-old Ted and 4-year-old Lucky we doubt that.  Is it a form of bonding?  Ted is often affectionate to people, and if they open their mouth and are willing to engage in mutual tongue-touching, Ted really gets into it.  So much we don’t know!  And how much we can learn by being close to bears and learning about them as individuals.  Sometimes it is easier to see the ‘what’ than to understand the ‘why.’

Sometimes, Lily goes to the den entrance and we hear her crunching snow.  Her mother June also did that when she had cubs.  Lily might be producing extra milk to keep up with all three.  With Hope nursing, we wonder where it all is going.  We suspect we’ll find Hope-sized scats near the entrance, but we don’t recall seeing her go to the entrance yet.  Just inside the entrance is the common place for bears to deposit scats during the denning period.

We know that it is commonly said that bears don’t eat, drink, urinate, or defecate in the dens, but the long denning periods of the north stretch that a little beyond what most bears can hold.   As the denning period progresses, they continue to make small amounts of feces from cells that slough off the inside of the digestive tract.  As it builds up, it’s called the fecal plug.  Nothing mysterious about it.  Starving people also make small amounts of feces.  Add milk to that in the case of Hope, and we believe she will have to go sooner or later.  If she deposits it near the entrance, it will freeze, and we will see it and collect it to see what it’s made of.

On the voting front, you jumped us up the ranks today in the Readers Digest race for $35,000 for Ely’s School.  Suddenly, we have over 10,000 votes and are in 93^rd place  http://wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com/town.jsp?town=ELY&state=MN.  With only five days to go, it would be hard to win, but a good showing will show we care and that might help people care about the bears in turn.

Thank you for all you do.

—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center