Long claws make for excellent clam - digging .
Every twelvemonth when coastal brownish bear emerge from their winter lair , groggy from a long hibernation , they go questing for a good dinner . They ’re opportunistic feeders , eating vegetation , intertidal invertebrate , Charles Edward Berry , and Salmon River .
Bears are unbelievably effective clammers : during a subject field look on bear go clam for 233 day over 3 years , the researchers found bears chance and corrode a clam every second . Clams are only exposed for a brief time : a few hr at extreme low tides about 15 days a month . Yet in that extremely abbreviated time , bear negociate to eat up 50 to 100 clams in a single session . It ’s not enough to work up up fat supply like salmon does , but it ’s a far more energy - dense supply than strictly grazing .
A coastal brown bear and her cub walk along the beach at Silver Salmon Creek in Lake Clark National Park . prototype reference : National Parks Service / K. Jalone
Interestingly , most bear you see clamming are sow , and commonly have cubs in - tow . Researchers hypothesize that it ’s too much effort for larger bears to go digging for such a small amount of food . This subsequently means that it ’s an unfastened quad with no braggart bears , so sows can go foraging without fearing for their rookie .
Bears can be right and left pawed , or even ambidextrous while grasp for dinner party . Along the Alaskan coast , brown bear adore munching on Pacific razor clams , soft shell clams , a few molluscs , and any tube wriggle they happen to whiff out .
[ Cunningham Outdoors;Dynamics of Intertidal Foraging by Coastal Brown Bears in Southwestern Alaska ]
reach out to the author at[email protected]or follow her at@MikaMcKinnon .
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