Melting and Naming -- REVISED 6:10 PM CST

ANNOUNCEMENT: Due to the complications this update caused for Team Bear's record-keeping, the Name The Cub Contest will be RESTARTED at 8:00 PM Eastern Time.  If you have submitted names, please resubmit them to  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  We thank you for your understanding and we thank Team Bear for their flexibility!

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With the temperature rising to 59 F yesterday and 39 F today, the snow on the garage roof dropped only 4 inches but is very wet. The snow has compacted and held much of its moisture. No sign of water in Lily’s den. All sounds peaceful—nursing with minimal squawking. With all three nursing peacefully together, it seems a nipple order may have been established. Hope is bigger, but can she suck milk any faster than the cubs? She may be able to control more nipples, though. That’s hard to see now, but in spring when they are out of the den we will learn more. Nursing today is interspersed with Hope taking control of the cubs to gently ‘manhandle’ them until Lily reclaims one or both to nurse, shortly joined by Hope. We would never have predicted this peaceful scenario.

The last couple days, the snow softened and plopped off branches. This opened the woods up and sounds travel much farther now. Last night about 6 PM, we heard snowmobiles on the Den Cam. Today, Jason went out to check. No tracks. Those sounds were coming from a mile away! Snowmobilers are taking advantage of the warm weather to get in some mid-week evening rides.

Bear hibernation is big in the news today.  A new paper on bear hibernation is coming out in Science Magazine, and we were lucky to get an advance copy of it in association with calls from the Associated Press and Washington Post to comment about it.  The Science Magazine study is of captive bears outfitted with physiological monitors.  The AP article about it is at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20110217/us-sci-good-snooze-bears/.  We couldn’t find the Washington Post article yet, but an article in BBC News entitled "Hibernating Bears Studied in Unprecedented Detail" is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12469856 .  More articles on bear hibernation are at http://search.nwsource.com/search?from=ST&searchtype=cq&similarto=MB%3A2014254866, including a particularly interesting one about bears having healthy hearts despite their summer diet and winter inactivity at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012381804_apusbearhearts1stldwritethru.html .

Names for the cubs are coming in to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , although we haven’t looked to what they are. We’re anxious to see your creativity. Since the rules say Lynn and Sue help select from among the top names, it might be fair to share some of our thinking on our preferences. We thought about a nice name to go along with the theme of Hope, but then thought about Hope being special and having the only name that diverges from the naming theme of this lineage—bear foods.

Lily is named after the Calla Lily that is so beautiful and white. Lily’s light face helped inspire that name for her. Lily’s brother is Cal, also in the Calla Lily theme. Her other brother is Bud, named after rosebuds. The calla lily is a major bear food. It grows in marshes and the leaves remains succulent all spring, summer, and fall. That means many of the nutrients are in a digestible fluid form. Bears stop eating blueberries sometimes to go down in marshes to eat these green leaves. It’s amazing, too, because the leaves contain oxalic acid crystals that cause human mucosa to swell and become irritated. Somehow bears tolerate the crystals. Wild calla (Calla palustris) is one of the favored greens in the forest. Bears only occasionally eat rosebuds.

Lily’s mother is named June, full name Juneberry, a favorite berry in early summer. Lily’s aunt was Hazel, which produces the most abundant nut of this region. It is one of the very top bear foods. A good hazelnut crop means females will get fat, stay out of trouble, and have good cub production the ensuing winter. In years of abundant hazelnuts, people wonder where all the bears went.

The female in June’s most recent litter was Jewel, short for Jewelweed, another favorite green. Also called Touch-me-not, it grows in damp soil. It is one of the few greens, like wild calla, that they eat in spring, summer, and fall.

Here’s a list of local bear foods in case it stimulates creativity in continuing the naming theme for this lineage. We know we should have thought of this last night. Thank you for all you are doing.

Thank you for all you are doing.

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