Field Trip Earth: Featured Interview

Black Bear Relationships

Submitted by Ms. Lannon from Charlotte, North Carolina on October 7, 2004

Katie Settlage, a graduate student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and a black bear researcher, tells us about black bears and their relationships with humans and with each other.

Questions and Answers

Question #1.
What species of mammal do you think has the most interesting relationship with the Appalachian Black Bear?
Answer:
People, of course! No other mammal in my opinion has so much influence over the life and death of the black bear. Our policies, our understanding, our values, and our needs impact this species—and maybe every species—in some way or another.

Question #2.
Do Appalachian Black Bears fight over mates?
Answer:
Yes, male bears do fight with each other for the right to breed with females. Usually there will be a large, dominant male in an area that will do most of the breeding with the females in his home range. Bears usually overlap their homeranges with other bears, and there are usually many female home ranges within a dominant male’s home range.

Black bears are solitary and, once the male and female mate, they part ways and the dominant male does not follow her around and “guard” her from other males. Therefore, it occasionally happens that a subordinate male may mate with a female after a dominant male, and it is possible that cubs in the same litter can have different fathers!

Question #3.
Has there ever been a case in which an Appalachian Black Bear has killed a human? If so, what were the circumstances?
Answer:
The American Black Bear is a powerful and sometimes unpredictable creature that deserves our respect. While it is true that the black bear’s other North American relatives, the brown (grizzly) bear and polar bear, are considered more aggressive and dangerous than the black bear, that does not mean a black bear cannot or will not harm people. However, it is important to realize that with the proper education and precautions, a trip into bear country can be immensely safe and enjoyable.

While it is true that black bears have attacked and even killed people, often these attacks are associated with bears that have been habituated to human food and garbage. Furthermore, black bear attacks often stem from a different behavioral response than, say, a brown bear attack. Brown bear attacks are often attributed to the bear behaving in a defensive manner, wherein the bear feels that a person poses a threat to itself or its offspring. The reaction one should display in this type of attack is to “play dead," lying quietly and clutching the head and neck with the arms.

Black bear attacks are more typically attributed to predatory behavior, in which they view the person as possible prey. The reaction a person should have to this type of behavior is quite different. The person should stand his ground and shout at the bear, throw rocks or sticks to scare the bear off, and slowly make a retreat to shelter if possible. Knowing how to behave in the face of an aggressive bear is a great step toward protecting yourself while hiking in bear country.

To answer your question, since 1900 there have been approximately 50 recorded deaths due to black bear attacks in North America. One of those fatalities occurred in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in May of 2000. A woman was hiking alone while her companion was fishing nearby, and she was attacked and killed by a 112-pound female black bear and her 40 pound-yearling. The bears were found guarding the body, and Park Rangers were summoned. They shot and killed both bears on site, and necropsies on the bears showed no underlying health issues that might have contributed to the attack. It was determined that this was one of those extremely rare instances in which a wild bear initiated an unprovoked attack, seemingly for the purpose of predation. This is the first fatal black bear attack in the history of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Question #4.
Do Appalachian Black Bears have any endemic diseases?
Answer:
The word endemic refers the notion that something is restricted to or peculiar to a particular region. As far as I know, there are no such diseases that are found only in Appalachian black bears. In fact, black bears in general do not suffer from disease much at all, and most bear mortality comes from other sources, such as hunting, roadkill, starvation, and predation upon cubs in particular.

A study conducted by University of Tennessee researchers William Cook and Mike Pelton in 1982 looked at blood samples from hundreds of bears in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The blood samples were used to examine the rates of disease exposure, and they did find evidence of diseases such as brucellosis, leptospirosis, and canine distemper. They were not able to find any evidence of some other, more serious, diseases such as pseudorabies or swine parvovirus. Parasites, while not classified as a disease per se, are common in black bears. Dozens of parasites have been reported from black bears in North America, ranging from intestinal worms to ticks and mites.

Question #5.
Have there ever been any hybrids between Appalachian Black Bears and other bear species?
Answer:
As you might already know, many strange hybrids have been produced under human control that would never actually occur in nature. The “liger” (lion/tiger) hybrid comes to mind, and can be frequently seen in circus acts. Some bear species can hybridize with each other under certain, unnatural circumstances (for example, polar bears and brown bears), but often the offspring are sickly and sterile. In nature, the cues and behaviors surrounding the mating ritual are specific to each species, and cross-breeding in nature is rare.

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