Physiological monitoring of free-ranging wild animals is providing new insights into their adaptations to a changing environment. American black bears (Ursus americanus) are highly adaptable mammals, spending up to half the year hibernating, and the remainder of the year attempting to gain weight on a landscape with foods that vary seasonally and year to year. We recorded heart rate (HR) and co...

The Kermode bear is a white phase of the North American black bear that occurs in low to moderate frequency on British Columbia's mid-coast. To investigate the genetic uniqueness of populations containing the white phase, and to ascertain levels of gene flow among populations, we surveyed 10 highly polymorphic microsatellite loci, assayed from trapped bear hairs. A total of 216 unique bear geno...

With few exceptions (Leyhausen 1948; Meyer-Holzapfel 1957; Krott and Krott 1963; Stonorov and Stokes 1972) we have known little about social behavior in bears. Until recently, the often solitary black bear has been treated a s a relatively non-social carnivore. Lorenz (1953), Krott (1961) and Ewer (1968) have maintained that the bear does not possess a consistent repertoire of social signals, a...

The high incidence of Stereotypie behaviors in zoo bears (van Keulen-Kromhout: International Zoo Yearbook 18:177-186, 1978) suggests that the environment of these animals lacks essential stimuli for guiding normal behavior. Three experiments investigated ways in which bear husbandry procedures can be altered to promote normal behavior. In experiments 1 and 2, honey-filled logs were given to a s...

Conduction in the heart requires gap junctions. In mammalian ventricular myocytes these consist of connexin43 (Cx43). Hearts of non-hibernating species display conduction disturbances at reduced temperatures. These may exacerbate into lethal arrhythmias. Hibernating species are protected against these arrhythmias by a non-resolved mechanism. To analyze whether the amino acid composition of Cx43...

sequencing of a part of the amelogenin gene. This gene is lecated on the X and Y chromosomes, and there are 54 nucleotide de]etions on the Y chromosome-specific gene. Forty-seven (26 ma]e and 21 female) DNA samples and 23 (13 ma}e and 1O female) DNA samples, respectively extracted from white blood cells and hairs ofJapanese black bears were analyzed, The primers SE47 and SE48 from this X-Y homo...

Protected areas are major tourism assets for a nation, particularly for developing countries providing sustainable benefit to the local community while funding for the maintenance and rehabilitation of the protected areas themselves. Valley of flowers national park is naturally meant for the conservation and study of western Himalayan flora. It became National park in 1982 and after that livest...